


What I Choose

by ethereal_ashwinder



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Harry Potter Next Generation, Romance, alternating pov, gryffindor!scorp, non-cursed child compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-28 23:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7661350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ethereal_ashwinder/pseuds/ethereal_ashwinder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>I was a Malfoy, I was a Malfoy, I was a Malfoy...sometimes the worst thing about being a Malfoy was that she was a Weasley.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> It's been twenty-five years since the Battle of Hogwarts. Can Scorpius Malfoy and Rose Weasley step away from a past that does not belong to them, and claim a future that is all their own?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. SM.

SM

 

I was a nervous sort of boy, and she was the vivid opposite. I suppose that was why I loved her. I was some absence, some lack of colour, and she was all the colours there was, all the seasons. Autumn shone out of her red hair, her footsteps were spring, her smile a June wedding. Her eyes could have the sear of the lake in cold winter— as weightless, light, and sharp as ice— but, I must admit, I saw them more often as sapphire: soft and round, contemplative and silent.

She was easy to watch on the podium. The whole school was lined up at her feet, and it was almost difficult for me to believe that they were not there purely for her— in my opinion, they ought to have been. With the way she held herself— straight-backed, long nose in the air— it was as though she thought so too. Rose Weasley gave the impression that she could own an audience, a crowd, an amphitheatre if she _had_ to: she just didn’t often _want_ to.

And that, I suppose again, was another reason why I loved her. For all her gifts, social and otherwise, for all the multitudes of friends and family that surrounded her at any given point, she was a land of her own choosing. A lone wolf, a rare creature, a keeper of laws only she knew: I was curious to learn her ways, a magizoologist presented with something truly remarkable .

You see, I, Scorpius Malfoy, was the observer she did not know about. In the front row I think I may have been the only one who saw her pale hands shiver over the parchment notes she had made. I saw the nervous clutch of her robe, the swallow, the tucking of a tendril of hair behind her ear. Despite her nerves she was immaculate, and was more steely and composed than I would ever have been with the wizarding press of Europe lined up to photograph me, and the purple robes of Ministry representatives breathing down my neck.

‘Good afternoon, witches, wizards, and magical creatures of Hogwarts; and thank you for that warm introduction, Headmaster Flitwick— I am very honoured to have been asked.’

At her words, an atmosphere settled over the gathered audience. Everyone fell silent at once.

‘I am going to begin,’ she said, her words trembling only slightly, ‘by stating the obvious.. We gather here on 2nd of May, 2023 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts …’

I watched, enraptured, as she spoke. I tried to make it seem as though I was not swayed by her— by her looks, her voice, her words. My parents were here, somewhere. More importantly, her parents were lined up nearby and had a full view of my face as well as their daughters. I had already avoided some eye contact with her father and didn’t wish it repeated. So I listened, only glancing up from time to time, my eyes otherwise on my own hands which were clasped in my lap.

Rose Weasley talked for what must have been five minutes before her voice changed. Commanding though it had been before, it hardened. My skin prickled and I couldn’t look at my hands any longer: I had to watch her. I had to see her change.

‘What we must remember,’ she said, fingers curled white around the lectern, mouth set, ‘is that Voldemort was not some aberrant monster who defied the laws of nature, not some fairy tale villain sprung from nightmares to cause evil for the sake of it: he was human. He was a man. And before that, he was a boy. A boy the same age as my classmates and I, a boy even younger.’

‘It would be surprising for many of you if I stood here in defence of He Who Must Not Be Named: and believe me, I do not. My family, like many of yours, suffered in order to put an end to his reign of horror, bloodshed, and evil. But, standing here, I would be remiss if I did not implore you to ask: why? Why did one boy, much like us, with talent and a bright future ahead of him, venture to become the most dark and feared wizard of our time?’

‘The answer is: he chose to.’

She had built herself up— and now, she let her words fall. She was a master at this, was Rose Weasley, something else entirely to anything I’d seen before. We were waiting for her, all of us, this crowd of hundreds on this bright but fading day by the lake, the white marble of Dumbledore’s tomb glittering at her back. I felt her words shudder down my spine, vertebrae by vertebrae, until I was gripping my knee hard just to stay upright in my chair.

‘We all have choices,’ she said, almost in a breath.

‘We wake up each morning, each and every one of us, responsible for ourselves. Responsible only for ourselves, for our own actions, for how we treat other people. I was told by a wise man once, that another wise man once told him: Voldemort was merely a man, merely a boy, who made all the wrong choices.’

She smiled, now, at her uncle. Harry Potter nodded back at her, with a similar expression on his own face.

‘I intend to make the right choices,’ she continued. ‘I, and I hope many other people here, intend to follow the example of the people we are truly here to celebrate. I intend to wake up each morning and choose to be kind. I choose to be strong. I choose to treat others on their own merit, rather than their blood, rather than for the decisions their parents or grandparents made that may have no bearing on how they themselves choose to act…’

Almost imperceptibly, she glanced at me. I was frozen to my seat. My heart thudded: she was speaking for me.

‘I choose to be sympathetic; I choose to be good, and to fight for the goodness inside of us that others, in their unparalleled idiocy, would seek to destroy. And I am so immensely grateful to those who made these same choices quarter of a century ago, that we might sit here, all kinds of magical peoples together, in freedom.’

There was some sniffling behind me— an elderly witch had begun to cry. Rose was triumphant: her skin glowed. To my right, her mother had one hand over her mouth and her father had his arm around her. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t have made a sound.

‘And so, my peers, my friends. We must all recognise that no matter our heritage and origin, no matter our race or species, no matter even our Hogwarts house—there is within us all a kernel of both good and bad. We sit here today, free and peaceful, because there were people twenty-five years ago who chose to act in the name of good despite the temptation they might have had to do otherwise. There were people twenty-five years ago who gave their lives in the name of what was right and pure and true— members of my family, friends of my mother and father, people I will never know…..’

She trailed off, quietly, deliberately. She bit her lip.

‘….let us celebrate their lives. Let us celebrate their sacrifice. Let us celebrate, most importantly, what they have given us: the chance to create a better world. The chance to make our own choices. Let us celebrate our heroes.’

Her eyes stayed steady, hovering just over the heads of those in front of her. She looked down only at her notes. I imagined that only I could see the trembling of her fingers as they turned the page. Maybe those powerful words were draining her, maybe the fire that she felt— that I could see in the cut of her jaw, the thin lines of tension at her eyebrows—burned too brightly to be fully contained.

When she stepped down, there was a slight pause from the crowd before the applause began, slowly at first before becoming generous and loud, almost tumultuous. Despite the dignity of the occasion, someone cheered. I stood up with the rest, clapping, my face struggling to suppress the smile that grew on it when I saw her turned-away cheek turn bright red.

‘She’s a clever girl, tha’,’ I heard Hagrid sniff loudly over noise. ‘Jus’ like her mother, she is.’

I saw Hermione Granger-Weasley, Minister of Magic, beaming by the crowd of Ministry associates alongside her husband and the famous Boy Who Saved with his wife Ginny. Both of Rose’s parents looked as proud as it was possible to be without physically melting and I felt a strange stab of pain. I wondered what my own father had made of this girl and her words: I would find out soon. For all his faults, I could not imagine that he would not be impressed.

Rose shook Headmaster Flitwick’s hand. Passing her mother and father but unable to stop without disrupting the ceremony, I watched her as she held out a hand to them and squeezed her mother’s palm. She smiled at her father, then nodded happily at her aunt and uncle.

In a few moments, she took her seat beside me, announcing her presence more by scent than anything: sweet violet with a citrus edge. Her hands were still tense, still clutching one another, and I wanted so desperately to reach out and take one and clasp it between my palms to soothe it. Her shoulders deflated: she had done it. She had been a roaring success.

Against my will, I breathed: ‘Well done, Rosie,’ though I’d never called her any such thing. As soon as I said it, I wanted to wrench it away out of the air again, for giving too much away. Stupid Malfoy, I cursed myself. Look what you’ve done.

Rose jarred: she blinked and her head half turned to me, her eyes searching.

I did not meet them.

_Maybe the noise hid it,_ I told myself. _She’ll never know._

Professor Longbottom took to the stand next. He cleared his throat: there were tears in his eyes.

‘Thank you to Rose Weasley for that…very moving speech.’

He caught Rose’s eye and gave her a watery smile.

They would go on to read the names of the dead. He began: ‘Atterly, Alfred…..’

I thought about my father and mother, sitting behind the crowd of students with the invited guests. These were mostly comprised of bereaved family members and those who were present for the Battle of Hogwarts itself. Funnily enough, my father didn’t receive an invitation straight away: I had to subtly mention it to Albus, who wasn’t aware of the slight. He acted as though it was an oversight, and so it must have been: that was what I told myself.

However, I wasn’t sure that I believed it. To be sure, by the time of the final showdown, my father and my grandparents had abandoned both sides of the fight— ‘our allegiance is to ourselves,’ as Grandfather Lucius would say in his final years— but my mother had joined Slughorn and a group of other Slytherins to fight for the Order. We deserved our place.

Rose’s words had hit home. I had always attempted to escape my toxic heritage wherever possible: and, despite the fact that my father and I never talked about his part in the war, I felt sure he was as keen to escape from his past.

Yes, I did not know how my father felt. It probably said something about him, though, that he was here.

And I also had to admit that, despite what people may have said about me in the past, it said something about me that the youngest of the Malfoy line was in the front row of this memorial with Albus Potter to my left, and Rose Weasley to my right.

What did my parents think of her? As though it mattered. Despite it all, she was still a Weasley.

‘Brown, Lavender…’

Rose shifted beside me as she resettled into her seat: her knee now touched mine. My skin seemed to burn below the fabric of my robes where the slight pressure made an imprint. I had to move, really…but I did not.

At times, her proximity could be unbearable.

By ‘Weasley, Fred,’ she was crying. Not as the others were, with choked throats and stuffed sinuses: not like Hagrid, blowing his nose like a foghorn. She let the tears fall down her cheek with her chin in the air, quite composed otherwise. Occasionally, though, she seemed to get frustrated with them, reaching up to swipe them away determinedly. Even I, preoccupied with watching her out of the corner of my eye, was hit anew by each new name drawing itself out of Professor Longbottom’s mouth. Each syllable was like a new black ink drop in the honey liquid of our day, each consonant a sharp, grim contrast to our bliss.

Each name a real person who had once lived and breathed, who had probably once stood where we sat, who had seen the sun lower over the castle once before on a May day quite like this.

‘Young, Thomasina…’

I blinked and, to my surprise, a tear fell on the back of my hand. To look at it, I lifted my fingers. They shook violently. The familiar guilt that I had known since I was old enough to understand the war settled on my shoulders again: those Death Eaters, the Malfoy’s. The worst of them all, somewhere in there, Bellatrix Black, Bellatrix Lestrange. _Their blood in my veins._

My hand curved into a fist and I stretched out both of my arms in front of me as discreetly as possible, pushing the wrists into my knees. For a moment, I forgot anyone at all was beside me— Potter or Weasley, they could be anyone. I forgot the words of Roses’s speech, and the familiar thought occurred to me: I would only ever be a Malfoy, despite what I truly believed.

In many ways, my family was responsible for the deaths of these people. Perhaps they’d even killed some of them. And if their blood did it, couldn’t mine? Somehow, I, too, was responsible for this. I wasn’t fit to breathe the same air as Al Potter, as Rose Weasley: I was tainted. I would never be truly good.

‘We now ask you to raise your wands in salute of those lives lost. May they live on in our memories.’

I stood with the others but my thoughts were elsewhere, growing darker and darker as they disappeared down an oft-travelled path. Why could I not think straight and well, like the others? Why could I not accept that I was different to my father and grandfather— why could I not trust myself?

Rose’s arm bumped into mine. She was left-handed and there was little room. The rays of light that our wands emitted crossed only for a second and bounced off one another in a ribbon of gold. She gave me an apologetic, teary smile, and a shrug, and I nodded in response. I was still snarky, still cold, though I wanted to be warm towards her— for her. I was the nervous, the cold, the empty. And she was the certain brightness, the heat, the sun that made the sky brim before it fell.

Gradually, the lights disappeared into the waning evening. Those in the aisles around us turned to one another now that the ceremony was over, barely speaking, some hugging one another, comforting one another. In another universe, I would have put an arm around Rose’s shoulders. I would have pressed on her wet cheeks with my sleeves to dry them. While it was not quite silent, conversations were hushed. The atmosphere was one of solemn reverence.

This was until one voice in the crowd cried: ‘Draco Dormiens Nunquam Tittilandus!’

It was James Sirius Potter.

Soon, the young Fred Weasley joined in: ‘Draco Dormiens Nunquam Tittilandus!’

The solemnity popped like a bubble. Rose had her face in her hands, but her back began to shake from laughter instead of sobs. She looked up through her fingers, her wet face grinning widely, her eyes bluer than ever against her red cheeks. She looked at me, and the shock must have been evident on my face, because then she laughed louder.

_‘Draco Dormiens Nunquam Tittilandus!’_

It had become a chant.

Albus, beside me, elbowed me sharply in the ribs. Before I could protest, he swung his arms around my neck in a comradely grasp, and in my ear yelled: ‘Draco Dormiens Nunquam Tittilandus!’

I joined in. The grief I had felt turned to relief, became lighter until I no longer felt it pressing on me. I smiled. ‘Draco Dormiens Nunquam Tittilandus! _Draco Dormiens Nunquam Tittilandus!’_

It became a vast chorus. Even the teachers, the Ministry, the invited parents, all ex-Hogwartians in the crowd joined in as we left our seats and made our way back to the castle and the Great Hall through a covered walkway bedecked in trailing flowers and lit by floating orbs of warm light.

‘What a day!’ Rose said to Al, moving past me so she could hug him tightly.

‘You were amazing, Rose!’ he assured her, grinning. Around us, I could see her friends pushing their way towards her to congratulate her. There was a very brief opportunity for me to make up for what I had definitely not said to her earlier: the ‘Rosie,’ still haunted my thoughts and made me want to physically recoil in embarrassment. Or else jump into the lake.

‘Yeah, nicely done, I suppose, Weasley,’ I said, attempting to imbibe it with civility and humour rather than callousness,

Batting off one of her cousins, who was flapping at her, enthused, she smiled widely in response. My heart skipped a beat. Gratefully, she said, ‘Thanks, Malfoy.’

I nodded, then quickly turned from her. Mostly to avoid confronting the queasiness I suddenly felt, I said to Al, ‘Good memorial, wasn’t it?’

‘It was bloody sad, if that’s what you mean, Scorp,’ he replied, taking off his glasses and wiping them on his sleeve. He repositioned them with a squint and then grinned. He looked a little more like his dad than usual when he did this— probably because his hair became just a little more messy. ‘Thought I was going to jump in Dumbledore’s tomb with him for a cuddle for a moment or two at the end. But now for a good long Feast! You sitting with us?’

By ‘us’ he meant ‘my family, instead of yours?’

I glanced behind me and found my fathers balding blonde head in the swathes of people moving from the area. ‘Better not…they did make an effort, after all. I’ll catch you later, though.’

‘You will, pal,’ he said, being carried off by his brother and a stack of our Quidditch friends, ’Save me a dance, eh? Wouldn’t want to miss the quivering action of the Malfoy thighs!’

’Say that a bit louder, Al, I think Aragog didn’t hear you in the next life,’ I shouted at him over the hubbub— but he was gone.

I felt eyes on me, and it was her. She was speaking to her parents, but she glanced at me over her fathers shoulder. The electricity seemed to storm up out of the ground and into my limbs, taking hold. It was a muted kind of paralysis: it was moving through treacle. The past year had been agony with her: always there, in most of my classes, always lovely and always so stubbornly smart. Whatever I thought about, my mind always drifted back to her in some way. I was a Malfoy, I was a Malfoy, I was a Malfoy— sometimes the worst thing about being a Malfoy was that she was a Weasley. She was the thorn in my side, the sharp splinter in my skin. Moving was pain, and not-moving was worse: she never left me.

It ached. _I_ ached.

Her eyes dragged from mine and I was released again. I drove my hands into my pockets and went off in search of my father.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, just thought I'd drop this since I have the next two chapters written! I haven't read the Cursed Child yet (I KNOW, I'M SO UPSET) so this fic will obviously be apart from the canon as far as that's concerned. Let me know what you think and if there's any issues (grammar, spelling, continuity....) because I haven't had it beta'd! Loves :) xx


	2. RW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The War did not belong to me, but I still- somehow- seemed to belong to it.

RW

I was so happy it was over. The adrenaline had been coursing through me for days, I hadn’t slept properly for two nights, and I had spent the previous evening going over my speech again and again in the mirror, trying desperately to get it right.

That morning I hadn’t been able to even _look_ at my words. They felt as though they were written in a foreign language and a foreign alphabet. I didn’t eat anything at breakfast, or lunch: I didn’t speak to anyone, at least not in a coherent sentence. According to Lily, though, I had been conducting myself with perfect decorum the entire time. Though, she noted, ‘maybe it was a little _too_ perfect.’

‘You looked like you had an old Cleansweep Seven jammed up your arse,’ she elaborated later on, her mouth full of mashed potatoes when we were all settled down at one of the tables in the Great Hall for the feast. ‘Before, I mean. Not on the podium. On the podium you looked great.’

Thanks, I thought. Reassuring to know it was not the massive blur that it seems to me now, the massive blur of a blank mind only set on not stuttering, and not shaking too much, and not, you know, having a nervous breakdown in front of the entire wizarding world.

I had done a good job, though. Of that I was sure: enough people had told me so by now.

‘I mean, did you _see_ her, ‘mione?’ my dad was saying to my mother, his mouth as stuffed as Lily’s but still, somehow, intelligible. ‘Our baby Rose! And all that stuff about peace! Thank Merlin she takes after you.’

‘Yeah, thank Merlin,’ said Aunt Ginny, rolling her eyes. ‘Else the poor boys in the front row would be mopping the spew off their robes right now. Broccoli, Rose?’

I shook my head. We were laughing as my dad’s ears turned maroon and he began to splutter. ‘That was _one time_ , Gin! And I’d had a pretty rough night on the Firewhisky before—‘

The rest of his sentence was drowned out by a collective howl of laughter from the other Potters, who were listening to Uncle George tell a story about the time Uncle Fred had dropped Doxy droppings in Mundungus’s pumpkin juice back in the old Order days. Taking up at least a quarter of the long house tables (which had been elongated along with the rest of the hall to accommodate the extra visitors), my family was by far the loudest and most lively, especially with the addition of Victoire and Teddy’s new baby, who seemed so intent on screaming the place down that Teddy had had to run out of the hall with him to calm him down. It was Vic’s birthday, too; she was wearing a crown Dominique had enchanted with little vine leaves and sparkles. I caught her eye, and she winked at me and blew me a kiss.

I was happy, about as happy as I had been in weeks. First and foremost there had been the stress about end-of-year exams, on top of all the essays and assignments due in for my various subjects and my prefect commitments— and then Headmaster Flitwick approached me about the speech. It was far too much of an honour to pass over, but taking it on still contributed greatly to my stress levels. I had been so determined to get it right, to hit the right note, to not be either too grim or too light, and to relate what I felt was an important message— my mother and I had been owling for weeks, going through draft by draft so that it was perfect. I had been _excited_ through all that time, but not precisely _happy._

Now, though, I was surrounded by the people I loved most, and the anticipation had grown and crashed and fell like a storm wave I could not run from and had to ride. This was the sweet aftermath, the safe washout, the clean and contented satisfaction of a job well done.

This thought in mind, my gaze drifted from spot to spot across the hall, alighting on friends, the parents of friends, and people I knew personally and people I merely knew of. Occasionally I would see someone I had never seen before in my life, but that was rare. As a Granger-Weasley everybody knew me, and so I thought it made a lot of sense to arm myself in return and make sure I knew them. The knot of photographers gathered at the corner of what ought to be the Ravenclaw table had been distracted from their usual invasive pursuit by the fine Hogwarts fayre, but I knew that once the last morsel of the sticky toffee pudding disappeared from their plates that their cameras would be picked up and pointed our way once more. Such was our lives, and we had a duty.

I winced as a roar of laughter coincided with the dropping of cutlery nearby and a particularly bad scrape of metal on ceramic. Sometimes my duty meant I had to remain in places I would rather not be— and I would rather not be here, despite my family. They were fine, obviously, but the rest…after the adrenaline rush of this morning, I would rather have slunk away for a few hours before this dinner. Just to curl up with a non-school-related book. Just to catch my breath.

I looked at my mother with her hair pulled back, craning her neck to find a departmental head she’d been trying to catch for a few days now; he had just returned from annual leave and hadn’t been on top of his memos. She might have had a bone to pick, or she might have just been saying hello.

She was doing her job, and it was time to do mine. I was here now: there was nothing for it but to play the game.

Returning to my scan of the room, my eyes skimmed over the adjacent table and were drawn to the empty seats around one particular handful of people. The Malfoy’s looked meek and solemn amongst the uproar. They appeared to be eating in near-silence— it was as though the chanting of the school motto hadn’t quite burst the bubble of remembrance for them like it had for the rest of us.

I had always found Draco Malfoy intimidating and a little grim— I had never saw him smile. The opinions of my parents, eager though they usually were to put the past behind them, supported this view. His wife Astoria seemed a little kinder. She wrote a regular fashion column for _International Witch_ , and was a woman who married, in the way she carried herself, the immaculate and the untouchable: her long neck pulled tall, her blonde hair in an elegant French roll. They were, to all outsiders, a solid couple: grey steel against platinum gold.

And then, of course— there was their son. A mix of the two. Scorpius Malfoy held himself with the same air of practiced, reserved indifference as his parents. But with him, I knew from (admittedly limited) experience that the outer casing could be breached. A well-placed joke, an ill-judged comment would crack the cold veneer and let the emotion seep through— out it would pour to reveal the boy underneath. I watched with lips slightly parted as Scorpius shook his robe from his shoulders. He already had his tie loosened, and his shirt was rolled up to his elbows.

He drifted a fork aimlessly over his plate and looked as though he wished his food would swallow him rather than the other way around.

‘I’ve heard he’s a nice boy,’ my mother said, close to my ear, making me jump. When I turned to her quizzically she glanced significantly to where I had been staring.

‘Oh, Mal— I mean, Scorpius?’ I shivered, aware of every bone in my body. ‘He’s all right. He’s Al’s friend. I only know him a bit.’

‘Well, he certainly likes you.’

‘What?’ I said. I knew it had came out a little too fast. ‘Merlin, _Malfoy?_ What makes you think that?’

Her smile was a little too knowing. She opened her mouth to say something, but then thought better of it and shook her head. ‘Just remember,’ she said finally, ‘what’s done is done, and you are different.’

My mother turned from me then: the departmental head had reappeared at dad’s shoulder looking very tanned, and both of them turned around to speak to him. Lily, who had been listening to our conversation, nudged me in the rib from my left.

‘If you need a translation, Aunt ‘Mione means that he was, um, _staring_ a bit when you were making your speech,’ she said, keeping her voice low. ‘Believe me when I say, it was actually painful to watch.’

‘Shut up,’ I tried to say, my voice hoarse. I cleared my throat and tried again. ‘Shut up.’

‘Whatever,’ she winked, and filled up her plate with seconds, seemingly oblivious to the heart that thudded hugely in my ears at such an impossible and ludicrous suggestion.

Scorpius Malfoy? Don’t be absurd.

But apparently, I was being absurd today. I looked at my food with a strange, unsettled feeling and my appetite was lost. I thought of that single tear that he had shed on his hand, how it had nearly broken him. I thought of his knee pressed into mine. Although I had been numb to the rest of the world on the podium, I couldn’t deny that I had felt his eyes on me when I spoke as though it was a physical touch… I couldn’t _deny_ it, but I did attempt to ignore. I could not describe the way his gaze affected me, except to say that it was as though a light was being shone on me in the dark.

Had he said what I thought he had? Had he said, ‘Well done, Rosie’? Or had it been, ‘Well done, Weasley’? Under the clamour that followed my speech I hadn’t heard properly, but the soft tone had surprised me, and I felt sure it had been the former.

The blood rushed to my head when I thought of it again.

It did not matter. I wouldn’t look at him, I resolved. I would not look at him, at his hair like a halo and his face with its rounded, lovely angles. I wouldn’t look at his forearms beneath his shirt, tanned and toned from Quidditch. I wouldn’t look at his hands and remember that I wanted to touch them, or his neck that I wanted to kiss.

My deep dark secret: there it was, twirling its fork over its dinner plate at the adjacent table. Scorpius _Malfoy,_ of all people. It had been this way for a long time, and nobody knew. For a long time yet, nobody needed to know.

I would _not_ think about him.

My face aflame, I went back to my meal, picking at it absentmindedly and making what little conversation I could amongst the tumult of my family. James and Freddie were loudly pestering Uncle Charlie about his latest work capturing manticores in Cyprus, and Lily was joking loudly with my father about Uncle Harry’s terrible cooking attempts. I volunteered that I suspected he’d once inadvertently poisoned Hugo and I by serving us raw pancake batter flavoured, he said, with pumpkin.

‘I bet it tasted more like p—‘

‘Ronald!’

But my mother was laughing, and laughed even harder when Uncle Harry overheard and attempted to defend himself. When they joked like this— full of ease and friendliness— it was hard for me to believe that they’d suffered, and it was harder still for me to see them as the rest of the Wizarding World did. To my classmates they were saviours; they deserved to be leaders. To me, they were only ordinary. They were family. My family.

I witnessed this effect particularly when it came to Mum. She was two different people, really. On the one hand, she was the woman who braided my wild hair in front of the fire at night; she was the woman I remember turning the pages of my first books, sounding out the words, writing the letters out in the air with her wand. A strict mother at times, but always fair. She retained even in her worst moments a kind of brittle gentleness. Her hands, sometimes, would shake, and gravitate to a scar on her neck where a knife had been pressed, and Dad would have to soothe her out of a trance. This woman was soft and kind, and I loved her more than anyone on Earth, and wanted her to be happy.

But there was the other one, no less admirable, who stood as though she was made of steel and had a gaze like flint for the people who stood against her principles. A woman put through the worst, but had come out the better. A woman who wore every title they threw at her— from the Brightest Witch of her Age to Minister of Magic— with unbridled pride. That was the woman that everyone else saw: someone so capable, and in possession of such gifts, that she appeared invincible.

The two images flickered over one another so effortlessly on days like this I often wondered if appearances could be believed. Which was the real Hermione Granger-Weasley? If she had never seen the War, if Voldemort had never existed, would she be as fragmented as she was now? What part of her was constant? At her core, could she be both? Could a person be strong and fragile at the same time?

Had I another Rose Weasley within me who could do what I could not?

I had lost myself in my own thoughts, which I was prone to doing. I was staring at my mothers hands, wrapped around a goblet of pumpkin juice, and my fork was halfway to my mouth even though whatever had been on it had fallen off a while ago.

I jumped when Dad leaned over and snapped his fingers in front of my eyes. ‘Rosie trance, Rosie trance,’ he sang tonelessly, as he always did when I fell into a similar state.

I shrugged and grinned at him. The meal was over, and we slumped back, mostly satiated. A few moments later, the plates in front of us were wiped clean and disappeared, the great table legs began to lift, and the benches gently tipped forward to let us know we were to take our drinks and move away.

We moved— a big red-headed crowd with flecks of black and brown and blonde— to a space at the back of the hall with the rest of the throng. The tables split with a great deal of snapping and creaking, and rearranged themselves at the sides to make a wide open area for drinking and dancing.

Meanwhile, we mingled. Ministry officials drifted by almost in a line to shake hands with my parents and my aunt and uncle. Aunt Ginny was beset with Oliver Wood, the newly-elected Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports, and she looked very amused when he threw an arm around James.

‘Now this one, Ginny Weasley, I have no idea how— well, actually I do, with the parentage he’s got—finest Chaser I’ve ever seen in— well, finest Chaser I’ve maybe ever seen and I mean that with the biggest compliments to you Gin, the boy is an absolute star—‘

I don’t think I’d ever seen James looking quite so thrilled. He looked like he was going to cry.

‘Now, now, Wood, remember its his NEWT year—‘

‘Weasley, the boy could play for England _right now_ with the talent he’s got, if you would just let me—‘

‘I thought you weren’t supposed to involve yourself in the drafting of the International Quidditch League?’

‘Well, now, I’m not against a bit of horseplay if it means the country stands a chance at the next World Cup—‘

James was going to spontaneously combust. Uncle Harry, alerted to the situation by a warning look from Aunt Ginny, quickly detached himself from a conversation with the Editor of the Daily Prophet, Zacharias Smith, and wrestled his son away from the area of ego-boosting danger.

‘D’you want a paper bag, James?’ I asked as he passed.

‘A what?’ He was dazed as though someone had whacked him about the head with a Beater’s bat.

‘You know, to breathe into?’

Uncle Harry snorted, and was about to open his mouth to make another joke, when a sharp voice from behind him made us all start a little in surprise: ‘Potter.’

It was Draco Malfoy, his wife Astoria, and, hanging back a little from them, Scorpius.

‘Draco,’ Uncle Harry nodded, accepting the hand that was offered to him with only a little bit of surprise. ‘I don’t often see you around the Ministry these days.’

‘No, we prefer to keep a…lower profile,’ he said, with a sly glance towards the journalists that had assembled around our family. Poised to strike, as I had suspected, from the moment the plates disappeared. By some miracle, they had not spotted this: the Potter and the Malfoy. Perhaps they were distracted by Mr Wood, who was loudly and rather illegally/irresponsibly tipping my Aunt Ginny about the new line-up for the England squad.

‘Understandable,’ Uncle Harry said impassively. There was a silence that was stretched and awkward, and I— nosy, idiotic girl that I was— took the chance to examine the Malfoy’s more closely than I was able to before. In contrast to the rest of the hall, who apart from the Hogwarts students in their uniform all sported dress robes of various colours of the rainbow (there seemed to be a memo, somewhere, to be a tad flamboyant), the Malfoy’s were dressed in black. Draco Malfoy’s shoulders were cut sharply, and combined with them, his pale, pointed, slightly balding head gave off an image of extreme austerity. The shadows below his eyes and the faint curl of his pursed lips did nothing to make him seem happier, or at all inclined to smile.

His wife, Astoria, suited the dark colours better than her drawn husband. Although alabaster herself, her blonde hair had strips of honey through it. She wore lipstick the colour of pomegranates, and her thin wrists were laden with white pearls. She was beautiful. I had never seen a more elegant woman— had never seen a person so regal and polished. It was difficult to see a flaw, and as I looked for one she caught my eye for a millisecond, one fine brow arched, and I had to look away.

I tried not to be drawn to Scorpius again. I could already feel the colour rising in my cheeks— those bloody Weasley genes never let me get away with anything. As I shifted my weight, pushed my hair behind my ears, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Scorpius’s hands, clenching and unclenching at his sides. I noticed when he pushed them away behind his back. He linked and unlinked his fingers one by one.

It was a habit of his; I saw it often. He never could quite seem to sit still.

‘Thank you for the invitation,’ Draco Malfoy said, crisply and at long last. I had just been wondering whether or not it would have been rude for me to leave.

‘Yes, it was very kind,’ Astoria added smoothly, her voice much lower and warmer than I had been expecting.

‘It was no problem,’ Uncle Harry breezed. ‘I’m not sure why your names weren’t on the list. Of course, when Scorpius said to Albus we immediately got Hermione to sort things out at the office. I’m sorry,’ he finished. ‘It won’t happen again.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly, we were not offended,’ Astoria laughed. ‘Naturally you can’t fit everyone in at these things. What a wonderful day though, very moving— you made a speech, did you not, my dear?’

She had turned to me. I knew now for certain where the softness had come from in the angles of her sons face— her blue eyes were far warmer than her husbands, and her face had curves to it that Scorpius seemed to share. I could still see no flaw. Taken aback by her direct address to me, I started, but quickly recovered enough to clear my throat and answer. ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘Yes, I did.’

‘Beautiful words,’ she commended. ‘You must be a smart girl. Rose Weasley, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is. Thank you very much, I worked hard on it. Pleased to meet you, Mrs Malfoy.’

Sometimes I amazed myself with the words I spoke. I didn’t have to think about them: they were automatic, a relic of a childhood spent amongst adults and officials, diplomats and lawyers and ministers. I could appear composed though my insides were screaming, though my heart raced, and my skin burned where I felt his eyes rest. Out of the corner of my eye I knew he was looking at me, his head tilted slightly to the side like it always was in class when he was struggling to grasp something a teacher had explained. Was he attempting to figure me out?

In any case, I hoped I had said the right thing.

‘And you,’ Astoria replied, a small smirk on her face. She nodded, and tipped her glass to me— I had impressed her.

Quietly thrilled, I risked a direct glance at Scorpius. It was like warfare, like a dance: this tiptoeing around him, attempting to be covert. Would he catch me looking this time? Or would he be distracted by something else? Would he notice _how_ I gazed at him— could he tell what I was thinking? Could he see how much I wanted him?

This time, his blue gaze cut through me like glass.

I inhaled sharply.

‘Yes, very well done Miss Weasley.’

It was Draco Malfoy. Alarmed, I turned to him, and only the ringing echo of those words in my ear convinced me that it wasn’t some freakish auditory hallucination: he really _had_ congratulated me. The words were spoken in a tone that made it seem as though they were forcibly wrenched from him against his will, but the fact remained that they were out there. Uncle Harry’s eyes widened incrementally and James, who was only just emerging from his Quidditch stupor, apparently had to remind himself to shut his mouth when his jaw visibly dropped. Even Astoria’s eyebrows twitched— it was only Scorpius who remained straight-faced.

‘It was an excellent speech,’ he continued. ‘Admirable sentiment.’

‘Thank you, Mr Malfoy,’ I said, struggling to keep the incredulousness from my voice.

There was a pause.

Before I could stop myself, I quickly added: ‘Actually, Mr Malfoy, your son should be given some credit. He helped with some of the words.’

‘Oh?’

‘I did?’ Scorpius looked at me, his brows furrowed. My heart began to thud like a piston, so loud I thought it might be heard by all of them.

I was drowning in embarrassment.

He didn’t remember.

‘In third or fourth year, he held back a crowd of bullies from attacking Antony Nott, who I think was only eleven or twelve at the time.’

 _How_ could he not remember?! The image of him with his arms held out— that little boy nestled behind him in an alcove of the quadrangle, facing boys of his year and older— it was burned into my mind as though with acid.

‘He told them that all of us were given a choice every day we woke up, and that choice was all our own and nothing to do with where we came from or….who our parents were.’

Was I _really_ saying this? In front of _Draco_ _Malfoy_?

‘He said that we were given two options: the good one and the bad one, the right one and the easy one. And he told those bullies that they were worse than Antony, because they woke up every morning and chose the bad one all on their own. And Tony was young and had a lot more choices to make.’

‘And now he’s head of the Gobstones Club,’ Scorpius added, nodding. He smiled at me. ‘He still speaks to me sometimes.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s innocent.’

‘I’m glad you remember,’ I said. He grinned wider: I felt light again when he looked at me like this, as though I could be picked up and carried off by a wisp of cloud. It was a struggle even to form the next sentence. ’Any— Anyway, Mr Malfoy, I recalled that moment and built the bulk of my speech around it. You have a good son.’

‘Is that so? I’m glad he was able to _help_.’ It wasn’t quite a sneer, although I’m sure it would have been in another lifetime. Nevertheless, I could see that he felt a little pleasure at this, a little pride. I was reminded of something I had often thought: that despite all the stories and the whispers and the evidence to the contrary, Draco Malfoy could not be _so_ bad. He had managed to raise a son like Scorpius.

‘Anyway, Astoria, we really must be going,’ he added briskly. The faint glimmer, the faded candle flicker of warmth that had previously lit a little of his face had disappeared. He was once more a bitter middle-aged man who loathed every moment he had to spend in our company.

‘Always a pleasure to see you, Mr Potter,’ Astoria smiled easily.

‘And you, Astoria. Goodbye, Draco.’

Draco nodded in response and turned away from us.

‘Lovely to meet you, Rose,’ Astoria said, leaning forward. In a moment she reached out, and touched her soft hand to mine.

The look she gave me was a secret one. It told me she knew exactly what ran through my mind not only when I saw her son, but also what I thought about first in the morning and last at night and every time I looked in the mirror. I held my breath, stunned. She had the eyes, not of a Seer, but of an animal that knew more than we wizards ever could.

It felt like a challenge.

My heart pounded as I watched all three of them walk away, platinum-haired and flawless aside from the tousled back of Scorpius’s head.

I felt like I had to sit down, immediately. This time, it was me who had been bludgeoned with the Beater’s bat. I had just gone forty rounds with Bagman in his heyday.

_What on earth had just happened?_

‘Bloody hell, what a strange lot,’ James said in a low voice, once they were safely out of earshot. ‘But well done Rosie Pose, you definitely made an impression,’ he clapped me on the back and this, quite literally, did nothing to steady me. ‘They definitely either really really loved you or really really hated you.’

‘Eat Flobberworm, James,’ I groaned, pressing my palm into my forehead.

‘No, don’t worry, Rose, trust me: that was well handled,’ Uncle Harry said, glaring at the spot where Draco Malfoy had disappeared into the crowd. ‘The Malfoy’s are…difficult. Just be glad your Dad wasn’t here or that would have been a thousand times more painful.’

I knew that. I looked down at my pumpkin juice, which I had forgotten was in my hand. I swirled it around a few times, and with each swirl my heart seemed to slow. _It was nothing, Rose,_ I told myself. _It was just his parents. They said you did well. You made an impression._

Yeah, some impression.

Where _were_ my parents, anyway?

‘Or the press, Dad, I mean Merlin’s beard, how on earth did they miss that trick….?’

‘…..don’t count your owls, James, they’ll be back….’

I looked around the crowd—but I found them finally by following my dad’s loud guffaw. Bright and sunny, it added a scoop of butter to the warm atmosphere just as the stars began to settle over the enchanted roof. He and my mother were chatting to Professor Longbottom and a handful of others I could not discern with their backs turned. Near them, in the corner, a small band was setting up, members carrying their cased instruments over their heads and— in some cases— through one another’s legs. Headmaster Flitwick had conjured neat chairs for them in two rows of eight in the house colours: red, blue, yellow, and green.

I felt exhausted. I needed that seat… at the very least, I needed a rest. As well as the insistent noise of the crowd— the hangover of the noise and chaos of dinner, the memory of the last conversation— Astoria Malfoy’s parting look wouldn’t leave me. I could not understand it, and so I tried not to think of it. I thought instead of Scorpius. I felt unreasonably happy that he had recalled the incident with Tony Nott: it had made such an impact on me at the time that I thought about it any time I thought about the War, and, given the family I belonged to, this was saying something. Like it or not, I thought about the past most days, even though it was not my past. The War did not belong to me, but I still— somehow— seemed to belong to it.

Uncle Harry and James had been engaged in conversation for the past minute or so by an elderly witch with eyes that faced two opposing directions. She had half a bat dangling off of her dress robes, and any other day I would have found this hilarious— but I had no time. I knew that soon I would be pulled aside by someone or other, and the prospect of polite conversation in my current state of agitation appalled me. Rather than let that happen, I had to leave. I had to rest.

 _Only temporarily, of course,_ I told myself as I began to edge away from my uncle and cousin. _Only for a little while._

I caught my mother’s eye just as I reached the door to leave the Hall. Her lips were pursed, her eyes widened over my father’s shoulder: it was a warning look. It was that second Hermione Granger-Weasley. It was the woman who told me: _you have a duty._

‘I’m sorry,’ I mouthed, and slipped through the door.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's very late but it's up it's up it's up! I thought since I had it written already it would be up sooner than this, but I underestimated the heavy revision and editing it needed (isn't that always the case ???) So: second chapter, let me know if you like/hate it, let me know what you think-- it was Rose's PoV this time, but the next chapter is back to Scorpius :)


	3. SM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps she had something else to say to me that was not about Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration...

SM

 

‘Pretty girl,’ Mother whispered in my ear as she hugged me. ‘Take care.’

I didn’t respond to her. I knew she didn’t want me to, because Father might overhear and disapprove. But also, more importantly, it was difficult for me to know how to respond. It was awkward; I was embarrassed. I couldn’t agree with her that Rose Weasley was pretty: ‘pretty’ seemed too small of a word. A small word to explain such a large and incomprehensible feeling… and, anyway, my feelings didn’t come from her prettiness. I couldn’t confess— to my _mother_ , of all people— that I cared for Rose more for her kindness, her strength, and the magnetic intelligence in her eyes when she lifted her chin to look at me that I could never forget or ignore. I couldn’t promise Mum that I would take care: I knew that I wouldn’t. A Gryffindor’s curse.

You know what it was like? Caring for Rose, for a Weasley? It was like being trapped. Trapped in a web of her, of what she was to me, of what she could be to me, if only things were different. I couldn’t struggle against that silken net without letting someone— without letting _everyone_ — know how I felt. And I definitely wasn’t ready for that. I couldn’t even say her name in a sentence to Al without feeling as though the very sound betrayed me— even when I called her ‘Weasley,’ I knew that it sounded different to when I was talking about her brother or cousins. I doubted even more that I would ever muster the courage to tell Rose herself. The very thought made my blood run cold.

I felt like an idiot. About all of it. I was an idiot about her, I was an idiot for caring so much about her, an idiot for caring so much about _anyone_ , never mind a _Weasley_. I was an idiot for being so dependent.

Mother disentangled herself from me with a smile, and I lost the perfume of her summer scarf. ‘Bye, son,’ she said, with a formality I knew was artificial from the glint in her eye. ‘Your father and I will see you after your exams, as soon as you can manage—‘

‘Don’t stay too long at the Potter’s this time,’ Father cut in, sharply. ‘We barely saw you last year.’

‘I know, I’m sorry.’

‘You always commit the crime first, then apologise. I want you to stop committing the crime.’

‘Draco,’ Mother said, shooting him a reproachful look.

At her reprimand, his face softened as much as it was capable of doing. He straightened his shoulders. He had been a tall man once, so I’d heard, and he still kept a straight back: that pureblood Malfoy pride was unlikely to ever leave him. Nevertheless, all the scrutiny he suffered in the years after the war had taken its toll. Something about him was diminished in comparison to the boy in the family portrait at the Manor.

As usual, my father did not apologise, but his grey eyes met mine and I knew that he regretted his spite. He cleared his throat. ‘Good luck on your exams. Keep in touch. Don’t let your mother worry.’

A hand, held out for me to shake. I took it and promised, ‘I will.’

I had walked them to the school gate, which was acting as a temporary Apparition point for families who did not want to use Floo. As my father nodded once and moved away, I caught my mother’s cheekily blown kiss in my hand and returned her wink and smile. Without any more ceremony, they spun and disappeared, and the loud ‘pop’ that accompanied their exit resounded into the dusky evening glow.

I was alone again. The grasses and shadows of the forest and the gravel path underfoot all appeared to me in varying shades of dusky purple and blue, framed by the black lines of the tree trunks and the wrought-iron gates. The backs of the two boars at either side shone dirty bronze in the star- and moon-light. The gates shuddered, then began to close and scrape together. I dug my hands into my pockets, revolved on my heel, and set on my way back to the castle.

The air was clean and clear with a sharp edge of cool breeze left over from the shrill storms of the week before. I could have signalled for a carriage to take me back, I could have summoned my broom from where I kept it underneath my bed, I could even have done something as simple as take my wand from my back pocket and use it to cast some light on my steps, but the birds were tweeting softly around me and their peace seemed too holy to disturb. My thoughts were my own comfort anyway. It was easy, when I was finally on my own, to forget who I was. It was nice, to remember that I could be anyone on this planet at all.

I knew there were people in the world to whom the word ‘Malfoy’ meant nothing— but those people were Muggles, and I couldn’t deny that I was different from them. _Different_ , I thought significantly, carefully, _but not superior._ Never, ever superior. It was difficult for centaurs to live among wizards…likewise it would be difficult for me to deny my magical abilities and live a Muggle life.

I could try, though. I saw myself trying, one day, in the future.

An attic room in central Muggle London. A job in a bookshop where the books didn’t talk when you opened them. Photographs that did not move. Electric lights. A television. A new name.

 _It’s not running away,_ I said to myself. _It’s not running away if it makes you happy in the end._

The castle was beautiful, a grand silhouette against the blossoming constellations above. The stone walls , pinpricked with golden light, were full and sturdy and appeared more like an extension of the rock beneath them than anything that could be wizard-made. The thin arched windows of the Great Hall winked merrily in their jewel-bright colours, and the lantern pathway that led from the Entrance Hall doors snaked like an ephemeral ribbon to Dumbledores tomb by the lake, where the ceremony had been earlier in the day. It was hard to believe that what we had commemorated had actually occurred, and so recently: twenty-five years was nothing in the grand scheme of things, yet if history was to be believed, this castle that was now so glorious had once been barely better than a battered, suffering ruin.

Maybe that sort of change could happen to people, too, I thought, kicking a stone farther up the path from me. It shot away from me like a pebble I could skim across the water. Maybe that sort of change could work with families.

 _My_ family?

Things that are whole can be broken: every small child knows that. Each time a grip fails, a vase is smashed, a ruin is made. It was so easy, I thought, to destroy. The hard thing was to take that ruin of shards and powder and piece a vase back together from the fragments. Even more difficult to have it look the same as it once did. It never would be— the cracks, the gaps, the chipped off paint and unfound pieces would combine to form an ugly new reality. The use of magic helped, but even so, the repaired object would adopt an artificial sheen. My mother could always tell when father had had to ‘ _Reparo_ ’ a shattered glass, a broken photo frame, a torn curtain from our hyperactive cat. Did Hogwarts look the same now as it did a hundred years ago? Surely not.

Without question, the biggest challenge of all was to piece the vase back together and have it look _better_ than before. Was Hogwarts better now, with the memorial plaques, with the ashy blast stains on its walls behind certain tapestries that could not be cleaned, with all the suits of armour with dented breastplates and deformed helmets, with all the traumatised paintings— with all the new, young, heartbreaking ghosts?

I suppose it depended on perspective. It depended on whether you thought beauty was only to do with aesthetics, or whether you thought it had more to do with what was underneath that made it what it was, what held it up, what made it tick—whether the beauty had a story.

It depended on whether you wanted to find the story, or were content to leave it as it was at first glance. It was the same for names. The first glance: Malfoy. The story…..well.

Something else.

I kicked and kicked that pebble, I thought and thought, all the way up to the castle, listening to the growing, jaunty strains of the dance music emanating from the Hall and the river of voices that flowed with it. As at other times when I was alone, I found it difficult not to think of Rose. I cringed and physically grimaced; there she was again. Another memory of her around every corner, another image. You would have thought we were more than just casual acquaintances with the amount I could remember about her. You would have thought we were inseparable.

When I passed the Greenhouses, she was there amongst the Cuckoo Lilies as they pressed out their star-shaped tongues and covered the whole room in glittery yellow powder: she was the only one who laughed and lifted her face to the blossom; she was the only one who hadn’t leapt up in shock at the large ‘bang!’ that accompanied it. I overheard her: ‘It’s in chapter twelve. Twenty-six hours after the fourth crescent moon of the year— I knew it was today. Gosh, Albus, don’t you _read_?’ I couldn’t even hate the smug lilt to her voice, because the fine buttercup-coloured sugar dusted her eyelashes and I, distracted, had to watch as she blinked it away.

And then, of course, there was Hagrid’s hut, now a tiny dark smudge in the distance because its owner was at the party. I remembered Hagrid’s birthday last year— Al and I had turned up and found her already there, cursing and swearing and shivering, covered in mud from top to toe. The Kneazle that James and Fred had bargained with a fourth-year Ravenclaw for for his present had taken a liking to an unsuspecting cat and had dragged her bodily through the cabbage patch. ‘Time and time again, I realise I’m always here!’ she had screamed at them as they cowered, ‘cleaning up your _fucking messes!_ ’

When she saw me— alarmed, presumably because I was not a member of her family, and therefore not privy to her wildness— she brushed her caked, dripping hair out of her face with her hand and straightened out her savaged skirt. ‘Hello Al, Malfoy,’ she had said, with as much dignity as a person in such a state is capable of. ‘You’re just in time. I made a cake, and Hagrid’s boiling the kettle.’

 _Hagrid’s boiling the kettle._ I had been a bit too scared of her then to laugh, but now I chuckled under my breath. It was strange the details people remembered. The thought of Rose recalling my defence of Tony Nott for her speech gave me a strange sensation in the pit of my stomach. It was significant for _me_ , because after that incident, no one doubted that I deserved my place in Gryffindor. Whisperers were silenced, and I was allowed to settle into my house the way I ought to have been able to from the beginning. I did not think it would affect anyone else who wasn’t directly involved. Tony— a good person then and now— was convinced I was some sort of a king for what I did, despite the fact that it was just what anyone would have done. And the bullies…well, they gave me a wide berth in the corridor, and always tried to avoid eye contact.

I hadn’t realised Rose had been anywhere near us at the time, and I wouldn’t have expected her to remember anything. Retrospectively, my lack of awareness at the time was an excellent thing. I was beginning to notice her, and if I had known she was watching I might have acted with more care, less haste and recklessness. I might not have let my emotions get the better of me. As it was, I nearly hexed those boys into oblivion.

She missed out _that_ part when she was retelling it to my parents, I noticed. She missed out the part where I had one of the bullies by his collar, in the Muggle way, just as Professor Longbottom was rounding the corner.

I didn’t have any regrets.

I sighed; I was still kicking the stone, but, growing bored, I finally chipped it into the grasses on my left. It was beginning to get cold, and I had no robes with me. My solitary walk, my breathing space, was coming to an end. I just wanted to be inside, where Rose was, probably with her family, maybe dancing. I could sit and watch her, covertly, like I always did— trying very hard not to be a total creep. I think I normally succeeded, because nobody had noticed thus far, not even Al. Her relationship to him made it easier for me, because their closeness as cousins meant that she was around often.

I did not spend all my time being the dodgy best-mate-of-her-cousin, though. I considered us friends; I’m sure she did, too. We spoke occasionally, just the two of us— albeit, usually about school. You know: homework, essays, teachers, the odd theory that interested us. But there were moments when I felt— glancing at her over the top of a book, catching her eye as she bit the end of her quill— that she was holding back. That she perhaps had something else to say to me that wasn’t about Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration.

I mused on this until I was finally under the archways of the courtyard. Thinking with longing of the warmth of the Great Hall and the pumpkin pasties I could sneak from one of the house-elves, I headed for a side door that would take me into a corridor off the Entrance Hall. The moment I reached it, however, it burst open.

My hands went up immediately to protect me, but the door banged off my foot. I swore, loudly, just before someone else also squealed. The door had bounced off my toes back into them.

‘ _Merlin,_ Malfoy!’

‘ _Weasley_?!’

‘You gave me a fright!’

‘You gave me a broken _toe._ ’

‘Well you shouldn’t have been standing so close then!’

‘I was opening the door!’

‘So was I!’

I finally dropped the foot I was clutching and straightened to see her, leaning against the frame, watching me and chewing the hand of her robe. ‘Sorry,’ Rose said softly. ‘I was just going outside.’

I swallowed. ‘Don’t be.’ I cleared my throat. ‘It’s fine.’

She held my gaze for a moment longer, those beautiful blue eyes of hers, those neat little freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her face seemed to colour a little, but I couldn’t be too sure in the twilit shadow. Her lips parted with a ‘pop’, as though she might have said something, but then she ducked her head and swept past me in a quick stroke of dark red and a perfume that mirrored her name.

My mouth dry, my heart thudding, the impulse rose in me and I turned. ‘Rosie!’ I called.

She stopped immediately.

‘Can— may— _can_ I have a dance with you? Later on?’

I was a prat; I was a total prat.

The silence was only broken by a faint hooting from the Owlery. It was, at this point, endless: it seemed to stretch out in front of me like a path I was terrified of. Her silhouette, half in moonlight, was motionless— until, finally, her head turned.

She was smiling.

‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘Of course.’

‘Great,’ I exhaled.

‘Great,’ she repeated, walking lightly away. ‘I’ll see you…later on.’

‘See you,’ I said, and then watched as her figure hugged itself and passed further away from me into the summer night.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Third chapter! Ah Scorpius, my introspective little dear. I really like this one, but I finished it and then realised how short it is- unfortunately I have to cut it off here so the next chapter makes sense. I don't like posting til the next chapter is written, too, so there was that. It won't be too long before the next one is up!
> 
> Please let me know what you think! Feedback has been good so far and I live for reviews :) Thanks for reading!


	4. RW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'You asked me for a dance later, I'm asking for a chat now.'

So that was that then.

‘Can—may— _can…?_ ’

And then the killer: ‘Rosie.’

He _had_ said it. He _had_ said, ‘Well done, Rosie,’ after the speech.

_Rose—ee_. It sounded so lovely from him, the first syllable married to the next even though it didn’t strictly belong there, tripping off his tongue like the most natural thing in the world.

I gripped the stone wall like it was the only thing tethering me to the ground, not bothering to hide my wide smile since there was no one near. I had planned to come outside to cool off and for a little room to breathe— I had only just managed to pry myself away from a conversation with Gregor Finch-Fletchley, a journalist who had been tailing me around for a month or so— but now my neck was hot and I felt I didn’t need any air at all. My feet were restless underneath me and I rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet.

The lake shone like a mirror now, blue-black and sweetly lapping at the shore. I stared at its surface, entranced, running my hands up against the stones, feeling the undulations and fissures with absentminded delight. Ribbons of emotions ran through me as they had been all day, like swirling stripes in marble: there was pride that I’d carried off the speech and done something to live up to the legacy of my parents, pride in my family and being surrounded by them; the thrill of another encounter with the boy that I’d noticed particularly for years; and now this— the complete calm as the magic and beauty of Hogwarts rose up in front of me like a picture from my grandmothers old books of Muggle fairytales.

I discreetly ignored the conversation with Mr and Mrs Malfoy. Some things I could dwell on later.

Elated, I replayed the sound again: _‘Rosie!’_

Rosie.

And again: _‘Can— may— can I have a dance with you…?’_

With me. With me, with me, with me. With Rose Granger-Weasley. With _me._

_‘….Later on?’_ he had said.

…did it _have_ to be later?

Before the thought was quite through my head, my body was moving. I turned from the wall and the embankment that overlooked the lake and moved back under the shadow of the arches.

I marched to the door I had just came through and wrenched it open. ‘Malfoy— Scorpius!’ I shouted, my voice slightly jarring over the syllables.

‘Rose?’

He was barely more than a silhouette looking over his shoulder at me from the end of the long corridor.

‘Why later?’ I croaked.

‘What?’

‘I said, why does it have to be later?’

Was I really doing this? I mean, was I _really—_

‘Rose—‘

In for a Knut, in for a Galleon. ‘Why not now?’

He was moving towards me, keeping a quick pace along the corridor.

‘Why not right here, right now?’

My back was straight, my chin up and tweaked ever so slightly to one side, which I knew was an expression I’d learned from my mother. I suppose it could have looked defensive, but my heart was pounding too hard to put much effort into looking casual. This was not a casual thing to do.

Scorpius had his head quirked slightly to one side too, the opposite side to mine. He was smiling. My heart skipped: he was smiling hesitantly, as though he wanted to grin more widely but didn’t know if he should. I wanted him to.

‘What in _Merlin’s—_ ‘

‘Just out here,’ I said, nervously returning the smile and grabbing his wrists with my hands, sensing the soft skin there, the warmth. ‘You can hear the music from the hall no bother.’

He allowed himself to be pulled through the door and out from under the roof into the moonlight, still smiling. ‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about, Weasley?’

‘All about?’ I mocked gently. ‘Why should I? Frightened I’ve stolen you for some nefarious purpose?’

‘Well,’ he said, his voice sarcastic but playful, blue eyes dancing, ‘I _have_ heard some horrible things about you lot.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. Rumour has it that it was, in fact, _you_ who cursed Ralph Liverpots shower to spray him with pink glitter sugar water and cherub confetti after he broke up with your cousin… or was that all just a big misunderstanding?’

I grinned. I was delighted for several reasons (including the recognition of my own wily ingenuity), but mostly because I could not have imagined this going any better. Scorpius Malfoy was always a simple enough person to speak to at any time, but I had noticed that he became more guarded the more people were around. Now, however, he seemed completely at ease, with his hands—detached from mine— in his pockets and his collar brushing carelessly about his neck.

Our conversation was easy.

‘I couldn’t possibly say,’ I answered lightly, ‘Though he does make the corridors a lot more cheery when he’s that particular shade of fuchsia.’

He shook his head and rolled his eyes, still with amusement. We were leaning against the wall at the very spot I’d been standing at earlier, though he had his back to the grounds, and I was facing him.

‘I promise not to turn you pink,’ I smiled.

‘Oh, thanks.’

‘Not your colour. Maybe turquoise.’

‘I’m going back inside,’ he joked, not moving an inch.

‘Please don’t,’ I said quietly.

We looked at one another for a moment, and then Scorpius cleared his throat and glanced away, turning around to lean his elbows on the wall and gaze over the lake. The adrenaline that had been coursing through me, that had made me do this reckless and slightly idiotic thing in the first place, was wearing off and leaving behind a sick nervousness that, perversely, I was beginning to enjoy.

I was enjoying it because it meant that he was nearby.

‘So… the real reason I’m out here is?’ he said, breaking the silence. Then he added quickly, ‘Not that I’m complaining, it’s just…’

Scorpius, rolling his wrist, trailed off. He was always doing this, I’d noticed— never quite saying what he really meant. When a teacher asked him a question in class, he always answered correctly, but it took him a while to get to the point. When his hand was practically sawed open fighting the Venomous Tentacula last year and he had had to spend a few hours in the hospital wing to prevent him from bleeding out, Danny Finnegan had asked him how he was when he returned. Scorpius had responded— completely seriously— ‘Well, I had a bit of a sore throat this morning but I think that was because Al left the bloody window open.’

I wondered what he wanted to say now.

‘The real reason,’ I said briskly, deciding that if he wasn’t going to be blunt, I would, ‘Is that we never really talk, and we should. And if we’re ever going to talk, we shouldn’t do it in a crowded hall with my cousins baby screaming and a bunch of photographers waiting to make a sensation out of our conversation.’

He nodded as if these were fair points. ‘But you asked me out here for a dance, not a chat, Rose.’

‘You asked me for a dance later, and I’m asking for a chat now.’

‘Right, well. Lovely weather we’re having.’

I smacked him on the arm, but the smirk stayed on his face and he tipped back his head to laugh, revealing a long strip of bare neck above his collar that made my mouth go dry.

‘Well, Rose,’ he said, blue eyes kind and dark and just glittering at the edges, ‘You’re right about the photographers at least. What would Witch Weekly make of a Malfoy and a Weasley having such a civil, non-violent chat?’

‘You deserved it,’ I said primly, hopping up to sit on the wall, facing him. He shook his head, smiled, rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. The pale light suited him somehow, though it might have made someone equally as pale seem washed out and ghostly. He was very much opaque, very much there, very real and solid. So solid I could have reached out and touched him on the wrist, the forearm, the cheek.

I was grateful my face was in shadow, because I could feel it turn pink.

A ripple of delighted laughter spilled through the air as, around the corner, the door to the Entrance Hall burst open. A pair of shadows danced out of it into a pool of golden light, swinging what looked like a thick tree branch between them.

Scorpius, alarmed, made to pull back into the gloom, but I caught his elbow. ‘We’re fine,’ I hissed.

‘ _Quick,_ Lils—‘

‘Will you bloody—‘

‘Like the three-legged race! C’mon—!’

‘Isn’t there a spell—?!’

‘Shhhh!’ and the giggling began again. My cousins— Lily and, I presumed, Roxanne, darted off across the lawn towards Hagrid’s Hut, and the doors groaned shut behind them.

‘Earlier in the week,’ I began to explain wearily, ‘they were saying something about stealing the leg off a suit of armour from the second floor and filling it with Hippogriff dung before they put it back.’

‘But…why?’

‘To ruin breakfast for the hungover adults. Some of the Ministry members are staying the night, but they’re eating in the second floor Ancient Runes classroom instead of in the Hall. I told Roxy to put a freezing spell on the dung so it doesn’t start to really stink til the morning.’

‘Your family are crazy,’ he said, chuckling. ‘Brilliant,’ he added quickly, seeing the only half-joking glower I gave him, ‘but really. Batshit crazy.’

‘Well, you know how it is. Family, eh.’ I shrugged. Although I took part in my fair share of shenanigans, I saw myself as a kind of weary but benevolent caretaker of the others. Brought up as we all were on stories of the Marauders and their worthy successors, my Uncles Fred and George, it was inevitable that the streak of mischief that ran through us all would be activated. It was inevitable that we’d be inspired. We were as chaotic as any other large and sprawling family; we just had a tough legacy to live up to in more ways than one.

I had thought my response was a throwaway one, a sort of default. Normally, it would be skated over without much more thought, a kind of summary of what had gone before, a natural end to the conversation, a space to move on to another topic. But no sooner had my mouth opened to broach a new, vaguely related subject— James’s nutty reaction to Oliver Wood’s praise earlier in the evening— than I was stopped.

‘No,’ Scorpius murmured, his eyes a little glazed over, staring into a space beyond my shoulder. He spoke more softly than I had ever heard before, and that alone would have been enough to spark my curiosity. He looked down at his hands. He entwined his fingers together. ‘I _don’t_ really know how family is. Not your kind of family, anyway.’

I remembered, with a pang, the image of the Malfoy’s at dinner. So few of them, so contained, so isolated and silent. Immediately, I wished I could retract what I had said and the nonchalant way I’d said it. I opened my mouth to speak, but, again, he beat me to it.

‘I wish I did, sometimes,’ he said, his eyes continuing to avoid mine.

‘Did you like it?’ I asked quietly. ‘Growing up an only child?’

Scorpius shrugged. ‘No. Yes.’

He glanced at me fleetingly, as though asking for permission to continue.

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘There was this massive oak tree in our back garden—’ he began, before stopping short. ‘But I’m not really sure why I’m telling you this. I mean, it’s dead boring, you probably won’t be—‘

‘Of course I’m interested!’ I said, grinning widely in what I hoped was an encouraging fashion. ‘Please carry on.’

_I’ll listen to you read the Business Section of the_ Prophet, I could have added. _I’ll listen to you read a lecture by Professor Binns. My Uncle Percy once wrote a series of tediously dull reports on cauldron bottoms, and I’d listen to you read them out loud to me all day._

_I’ll listen to you talk about anything,_ I could have added, _because I love this. I love talking to you._

My face was a scarlet picture, I’m sure, now that my head had succumbed to exactly the sort of obsessive, cringey monologue I had been trying to avoid. But Scorpius was either too distracted by the story he was about to tell, or disposed to be gentlemanlike today, because he didn’t seem to notice.

‘Honestly,’ I said gently. ‘I want to hear.’

He took a deep breath, and shrugged, smiling, his hands in his pockets. As he relaxed, warming to the idea, he slouched. ‘Okay,’ he said finally, ‘but don’t say I didn’t warn you, Weasley.’

We exchanged shy smiles.

‘So you had this massive oak tree in your garden,’ I prompted.

‘Massive,’ he said, stretching out his arms as wide as they could go. ‘Probably like this thick, or at least it seems that way. I mean, I don’t know what sort of trees you have growing wherever you live— Derbyshire, isn’t it?— I absolutely guarantee this tree makes all of yours look like little, sad, dead twigs—‘

‘Well, now I’m feeling personally offended on behalf of the forests of the Peak District—‘

‘Oh hush, Weasley, I guarantee if you ever saw it, you’d agree,’ he smirked. ‘Take my word for it, this is the best tree you’ve ever seen, the best tree in Britain, with mammoth branches and leaves bigger than my head—‘

‘Bigger than _James’s_ head?’

Scorpius snorted. ‘Let’s not go too far, Rose. I doubt any trunk could support your cousin’s ego. But anyway, this tree must have been hundreds of years old.’

He paused, collected himself, and cleared his throat slightly. When he spoke again, it was in a much less businesslike, much more personal tone. I knew that this time I shouldn’t interrupt him. Filled with quiet seriousness, when he spoke it was with a voice that could make a room of shouting men fall silent.

‘So, I remember one summer when I was about six, maybe seven, going outside to play and deciding that I was going to climb this tree. I had taken an apple from the kitchens— even though to be honest I was this little runt of a child and could barely reach the counter— and I remember that I was going to eat it when I got to the top. I was— I was so excited, you know?’

‘I thought I’d be able to build a tree house or something in it when I was maybe a bit older. I remember thinking, hey, when I’m _really_ old, when I’m at Hogwarts, when I’m old enough to take friends home for summer, this would be the perfect place to watch a Quidditch throw-about from, I mean… it was so _high_ , Rose.’

I nodded, transfixed. The voice, the lips around the words, the tiny smile, the far-off look in his dark blue eyes as though he was a little boy again looking up at that great oak… he was more handsome than ever when he spoke like this, at length, and so honestly.

He trusted me. A tiny flame sparked in my ribcage at this thought and I, not wanting the dark again, nursed it until it became a warm glow that lit up my whole being— he _must_ trust me, in order to be so open. Scorpius Malfoy wasn’t this candid with anyone, as far as I knew— apart from Al, perhaps. I felt honoured, so honoured to be worthy of him, and his insecurities, and his childhood wishes.

Hugely and suddenly, it confronted me. It was a bubble growing in size and pushing against my chest fit to burst: the realisation that I cared for him more deeply, and in such a different way, than I had ever cared for anybody else before in my life.

‘I tried to climb it,’ he continued, unaware that my hands were shaking at my sides where they gripped the stone wall; unaware that, internally, I was almost breaking, splitting, straight down the middle. ‘But there was no foothold, Rose, and the first branch was too high to reach.’

‘I tried for hours. I jumped, I leaped, I tried finding things to stand on, but nothing could get close enough, because the roots were so big and stuck out so far below that there wasn’t a flat bit of ground. I stole some rope from the house and, I don’t know, tried to lassoo it or something— anyway, it didn’t work. By the late afternoon I was crying, cause I thought: fuck, this isn’t working and it’s because of who I am. My size. I’m a runt, I’m too small for my age, I’ll never be bigger, this is it, you know— I’ll always be on the ground.’

Scorpius wasn’t looking at me: he was staring, hypnotised almost, over the grounds. His voice slowed. I wondered if he even realised I was still there.

‘And then…my father must’ve heard me crying. I mean, that’s pretty impressive in itself; the tree is quite far away from the house. The window to his study must’ve been open… but anyway. He ran outside to see what was the matter with me. When he found out what was wrong, what was making me so upset, he was so angry.’

‘Angry?’ I repeated. My voice cracked against the word. ‘Why?’

‘I hadn’t used a broom,’ he snorted, glancing at me, jerked out of his thoughts, and out of his trance. He shrugged once more, but the gesture was hasty. It looked more like a dismissal of himself than an expression of indifference to the matter at hand. ‘I mean, what can I say? I suppose it was obvious. Like, a Ravenclaw or a Slytherin— any Gryff or Hufflepuff with half a brain— they’d have tried that first thing. I wasn’t a _Muggle,_ after all, or a Squib. I was a Malfoy, of Malfoy Manor. That’s what my dad said.’

‘But, Rose,’ Scorpius said, imploring me to understand, ‘ _Obviously_ I’d thought of flying. I got my first non-stabilised broom that year for Christmas, but it wasn’t the point—‘

‘You wanted to get up by yourself,’ I murmured.

‘Yeah,’ he nodded, exhaling as though grateful. ‘No magic. I wanted to climb the tree myself— you know— I wanted to feel the bark and the leaves, and reach a height knowing that I’d got there myself. My father didn’t get it. And, I mean, nor did Al, really, when I told him… but my mum came home later on, and Father must’ve told her what happened. At sunset she took me to the tree and gave me a boost. No magic. She just told me not to fall, and that I was to be in before supper.’

‘Oh, Scorpius,’ I breathed.

‘It’s not a big deal,’ he shrugged, not looking at me again. ‘I just— that’s what I mean about having a sibling. It would’ve been nice to not have to spend everyday on my own.. to spend time with someone round about my age in the same situation who, y’know, needed a boost when I did. Or could boost me. My mum was cool, but she wasn’t around all the time. And Father…could be fun, but he was still very much, y’know… my father.’

Without thinking— which was a running theme in my life, I was beginning to realise— I reached out and took his hand. I didn’t look up for his reaction, I just grabbed it, not even particularly out of any desire to be more intimate— but just in order to soothe him.

Instead of holding it, I had it, palm up, over my lap. With my heart in my mouth, I began to trace the lines there, hoping that the hair falling over my face was enough to cover the blush that had crept over my cheeks. My hands shook, ever so slightly, but his for once remained utterly still.

Scorpius didn’t speak, but I heard his slow and careful breaths. I was talking before I knew I had anything to say.

‘I had this toy once…nothing fancy,’ I ventured, my voice cleaving apart just a little. I hadn’t told anyone this before, though the memory still licked at the corners of my consciousness now and again, and left a bitter taste behind every time. ‘It was a little stuffed bear that my Muggle grandmother gave to me when I was tiny, about two years old. Hugo had just been born and this was her present to me, the new big sister, so I wouldn’t think I was forgotten.’

‘When— When I was about five she passed away from cancer, but Mum never stopped talking about her so we wouldn’t forget her. Hugo didn’t have any real, you know, physical reminders. But I did…this tiny little bear.’

‘What did you call it?’ Scorpius asked kindly, gently.

I half-snorted, though I found nothing funny. ‘Bobbie,’ I said. ‘Spelled with an i and the e. Not a y. I was pretty adamant about that.’

‘I bet.’

Still I swept my thumb over the bumps and hollows of his hand— it was hard to believe that I hadn’t always been doing just that. Still he allowed me to.

‘So when Hugo was six, he crept into my room and stole the bear from my bed, and he hid him. When I found out, I went to him screaming and screaming about it and, _Merlin,_ he cried really hard. _Really_ hard.’

‘I tried to take it from him and, hey, he— he set him on fire. Bobbie. By accident, because he hadn’t any control of his magic yet. Rogue combustion-by-magical-infant.’

‘I know it wasn’t his— Hugo’s fault. I know it’s a bit of a silly story, but—it seemed…’

‘Ah, Rosie…’

I still wasn’t looking at him. Maybe this was why he hadn’t looked at me when he spoke about his perfect, insurmountable tree. Maybe some silly stories revealed too much already, and to stare someone in the face while you told them was just naked indecency.

I wiped a tear from my eye. I hated crying, but usually allowed it to happen to me up until the point my throat made me want to sob. Although I wasn’t quite at that point here, it had been a long day and my proximity to Scorpius, though comforting in its own way, was making me even more vulnerable. I felt drained, exhausted; my shoulders trembled. My crying quota was almost up for the year, and it was still only May.

Another tear followed the first.

‘Here,’ Scorpius said, gently knocking my chin up with one hand while moving the other— the one I had been holding captive— up to brush the moisture from my cheek. My skin tingled where his had left it. My breath hitched. My eyes opened wider and another tear fell, which he also wiped away, though it had left my eyelash to fall right by the corner of my lip.

We were standing very close now, his body between my legs, his face only a foot or so away from my own. I registered dimly through the helpless throbbing of my heartbeat, that if he leaned forward just a little bit, he could kiss me.

But he never wavered. His eyes skimmed my face as though he was memorising it: as though he was checking I was whole. I in turn was staring openly at him, my mouth parted in waiting.

When he moved his hand away, he let it fall over my hair until his fingers ghosted lightly over my knee.

At the touch, I inhaled sharply, involuntarily, and it seemed to jolt him back to some kind of reality. With a touch of cold air, Scorpius no longer occupied the space in front of me and I realised I was desperate for him to return— I was hungry, but he had turned his back to me. He was running both hands through his hair.

‘Scorpius,’ I breathed.

‘Rose?’

‘Come back,’ I said softly, hardly believing how brittle I sounded. ‘C—Come back.’

Scorpius Malfoy looked as broken, as emotionally shattered, as I felt. Gone was the composure of his blood, the porcelain veneer of nobility that I suspected he wore to protect himself against the hate he endured and the guilt he felt for things he had not done. His face was fearful, his eyes wide, his hair tufted, messy, and even more like a halo in this light than before.

‘Rosie, I can’t—‘

I cut across him immediately.

‘Scorpius, don’t be—‘

‘No— you’re—you’re too good for—‘

I hopped off the wall, and he fell silent. Though every nerve in my body danced in terrible anticipation, I went to him. Tentatively, I reached up with one hand and smoothed out the messier parts of his hair, and then I dared to cup his cheek, my thumb lightly tracing the bone. ‘Scorpius,’ I whispered, repeating the name as I could have repeated it for ever.

His eyes would not meet mine again. Instead of attempting to catch them, I watched the long shadows of his eyelashes as they moved almost imperceptibly over his skin as it rose and fell. His breathing was short and sharp, and he smelled of mint and pine.

I was frozen. I struggled, momentarily, to think of what to say next. What could come close to describing everything I felt for him, now, after tonight? This brief half-hour under the arches with him felt like a moment I could mark time by: there would be a Before, and there would come an After.

It would have to be a sentence that would encompass not just now, not just this second and the seconds before, but also span the accumulation of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and…years that had passed since I knew that Scorpius was _it_. Whatever _it_ was, I hardly dared to think. How long had I known him? How long had I felt like this for him?

I knew it was too deep a feeling for so young a girl. If he understood, then he would understand immediately, and I wouldn’t have to say any more. If he didn’t…

I wouldn’t think about that.

_What should I say?_

My tiny human mouth. It would falter with the importance of it, if I left it too long, if I thought about it too much.

Finally I said, ‘I feel like I know you without words.’

Blue eyes flicked to mine in astonishment. With a huge wave of relief and joy, I could see that he understood precisely— he _knew_ what I meant. With a slight pop, his lips parted. He licked them, and his gaze flitted over my face desperately. The veil was well and truly gone; this was the Scorpius that no-one saw, and of that I was sure.

Why didn’t he speak?

I held my breath.

It took me a moment to see it. There. Behind the comprehension: a glint, a tiny glint, of anguish.

And it was then that I knew what he would do before he did it.

A step away from me; a shaking of the head.

‘Ro—Weasley.’

A return to mere formality. It didn’t matter that the word— my name— seemed wrenched from him against his will. Nothing mattered. He understood me, but he was turning away regardless.

I shook bodily, imperceptibly: perhaps with the reverberations from when my heart had slammed against the floor of my ribcage.

Scorpius pressed his wrist to his forehead. His eyes scrunched closed, but when he opened them again:

‘No,’ he said, firmly this time. The barrier was up. His face was composed— composed, and cold.

The blood drained from my face.

‘No?’ I repeated, so softly I barely heard myself. ‘What do you mean, _no?_ ’

‘I mean—‘

‘How on earth did you not feel— but you said that you weren’t _good_ enough for me— I don’t— I don’t understand—‘

Stony-faced, he let me babble. He stayed silent. Not even his eyes revealed anything of what he was thinking; in fact, if it weren’t for the preternatural stillness in which he held himself, I would have said he was utterly indifferent. I would have believed him.

But for some reason, I knew better.

I tried again. ‘I _know_ you feel the same. I hadn’t thought…but, after tonight… I _know_ you feel it just as much as I do.’

He still remained motionless. He was half-turned from me; I couldn’t see all of him, but I knew he was listening.

I hesitated before speaking again. ‘It’s because I’m a Weasley.’

I wasn’t sure how he’d respond. But I didn’t expect a dark, humourless chuckle.

‘No, Rosie,’ he said, one hand at the back of his neck. He glanced up at me as he spoke, and in the moonlight I was sure that I saw his eyes glisten wetly. ‘It’s because I’m a Malfoy. And you don’t know what that means.’

‘I—‘

_‘Rosie!’_

The sing-song voice from behind interrupted me. I swore. Immediately I knew, or guessed, at the state the singer was in.

‘Rosie Rosie Rosie Pose!’

‘ _Shh,_ Lils, it might not even be her…’

‘’Course it’s her, Rox, have you ever seen a head of hair like that?’

Roxanne and Lily, creeping back in the dark from their underhand dealings with Hippogriff dung at Hagrid’s. I stared, worried, at Scorpius. He wasn’t looking at me again, and instead was scratching at the flagstones with the front of his shoe. I sighed. ‘Please— _stay,_ ’ I said, hating that I was begging but not knowing how else to act. ‘Stay with me. We need to sort this out. I have to just check…she— they sound…’

Trailing off, I turned and walked back towards the wall where I could better see my wayward cousins, their shadows giggling so helplessly and weaving so chaotically in the dark that I had to wonder whether my suspicions were true: that they’d somehow managed to persuade or bribe one of our irresponsible elder relations to procure them some illicit Firewhisky. As soon as I was visible to them, one stopped and pointed.

‘Wait…who’s she with….?’

It was Roxanne. But as she spoke, the other— Lily— fell on her knees, groaning, still somehow managing to hiccup and giggle.

I heard footsteps behind me at the same time as Lily retched.

I cried out, ‘Lily!’ as the door to the Entrance Hall slammed.

My heart sank all over again, but I couldn’t think of that now.

I sprinted down the stone stairs and the grassy embankment to meet them.

‘Well, whoever he was, Roxy…Poxy,’ Lily grumbled as I reached her, ‘He’s….hic….c-certainly not there now.’

I was too agitated to even throw a dry quip back at her. Pulling my own hair back into a ponytail, I then tugged at Lily’s so hard and so vindictively that she let out a yelp before her body tensed for another vomit.

‘That…wasn’t very nice, Rosie Pose,’ Lily mumbled wetly as Roxanne let out a shriek of laughter and stumbled, her face to the sky and stars. The leg full of Hippogriff dung they had collected lay a few feet away, tipping some of its sludgey contents onto the grass. The toxic smell drifted over to us on the breathy wind.

It was foul, and was undoubtedly worsening Lily’s symptoms, but I felt a surge of maliciousness I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of. I decided I wouldn’t cast the freezing spell that would stop the stench. They could suffer. They had no clue what they had interrupted, those stupid, _stupid—_

‘What the fuck,’ I snarled through gritted teeth, ‘do you two think you’re doing?’

‘Collecting Hippogriff—‘

‘Shut up, Roxanne, you know exactly what I mean. Where did you get the Firewhisky?’

Roxanne hid it behind her back and looked at me with coquettish innocence. ‘What Firewhisky?’

As she spoke, it slipped from her grip, empty but for a few dregs, and fell with a dull thump on to the grass. Roxanne snorted and dissolved into giggles again, and even Lily, ill as she was, laughed through her groans.

I was furious; angrier than I could remember being in months. Irrationally angry, perhaps, given the circumstances— I was no angel when it came to misbehaving with alcohol. That said, I had never been such a mess, and so publicly.

No, I had never been a mess like this.

With a start, I remembered that there were _photographers_ in the hall— along with the majority of important people in the Wizarding World, Ministry reps that could be giving us a job in a few years, our own parents. Obviously this meant nothing to the two girls— they were only on the edge of fifteen— their self-respect clearly meant nothing to them, never mind the standing of our family, our reputation—

Photographers and journalists that had been waiting for years and years for one thing to knock us off our pedestal, and my two idiot younger cousins were handing it to them _on a plate._

Suddenly my anger didn’t feel so irrational anymore.

I jerked Lily’s hair again and, as though I was a first-year talking to her broom in a flying lesson, commanded, ‘Up.’

‘Oooh, I think we’ve upset her,’ Roxy said slowly, having the decency to look a little abashed.

Lily laughed darkly. ‘Perfect Rosie Pose. Rosie Posie Prefect, pudding and pie…’

I roughly wiped her singing mouth with my own handkerchief, bodily swung her around and began to steer her, by the shoulders, back towards the castle. I would take them in the front doors, and sneak them to the girl’s bathrooms in the dungeons and tidy them up there.

Part of me hoped they’d be seen.

‘…kissed the boys and made them cry…’

Roxy, composing herself with a great flourish and wrinkling her nose, grasped the thigh of the leg of armour at the open rim with both hands and began to drag it with her. I heard rather than saw her following us, with great difficulty but admittedly admirable strength.

I kept hearing the Entrance Hall door slam in my head. I kept hearing his voice. _‘You don’t know what that means.’_

I couldn’t blame him for leaving. I was an idiot to think he felt the same.

‘Speaking of kissing, and boys, Rosie Pose…’ Lily began, slurring a little. ‘That bright sparkling Lumos lemon head was definitely Monsieur Malfoy of the Scorp variety, non?’

I was so angry I couldn’t speak. My mouth was full of hurt.

‘I’ll take that as a oui.’

‘Take it how you like,’ I snapped.

‘I shall take it, my dear darling, as proof that you take your own perfect-posie-prefect- speeches very very l-l-literally.’

And then she bent at the waist, at the foot of the stairs leading to the great oak doors, and promptly vomited once more.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up a little longer than I'd planned, but in the end I'm glad because it made up for the wait. No wifi in my flat at the moment makes posting hard, but writing much quicker (less distractions) :) Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think!


	5. SW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’d fucked up: I really had fucked up.

SM

 

 

 

I was fourteen when my grandfather died, and at the time I was a scrawny, pale, unfortunate-looking thing with an upturned nose and an even more nervous personality than I currently possess.

 

He passed away in early October of my fourth year, in the grandest bedroom in Malfoy Manor. He and my Grandmother Cissy usually lived a few miles away, in a cottage they had moved to when my mother and father married. Once the years had taken its toll on old Lucius, my father had him moved back to the home he had always loved, and to the peacocks he still tended to in his retirement. His bedroom overlooked the lawns, the gardens, my beloved oak, and the rag tag Quidditch hoops I had insisted on building by hand. I never liked him, as his bigoted beliefs had persisted, albeit quietly, beyond the war. I suppose what I resented most was that I doubted he regretted his part in it as much as he claimed to.

 

Still, I saw him on the morning of the first of September that year for what would be the last time. Ill and bedridden, Grandfather Lucius beckoned me weakly into his room as my father stood stiff and silent in the door behind me, waiting to take me to Kings Cross.

 

He said it with a rotten throat: ‘ _Sanctimonia vincet semper._ ’

 

_Purity will always conquer._

 

I didn’t know what to do with a dying man. At the time, I shook his hand. Unusually, he grasped my hand with both of his and looked at me with what seemed to be an attempt at feeling. An attempt at warmth. Regret, perhaps, that he didn’t know me very much at all. But the moment passed, and when I made my way to leave, his grey eyes were concrete to me, and he had turned his head to the open window where the Virginia creeper needed cutting back across the glass. It had been a cold end to summer, and the very edges of the leaves were beginning to turn scarlet and gold.

 

As I say, my grandfather died in early October two and a half years ago, and about two months later my father wrote to me at Hogwarts and asked to meet me at the next Hogsmeade visit. Because I had asked for the first time to be allowed to stay for a few days in the Christmas holidays at the Potters’, and because I hadn’t seen my father since the funeral, I felt as though I had to accept.

 

And so it was that on the 10th of December, my father and I slipped into the recently-vacated booth adjacent to the window in the Three Broomsticks.

 

The chat was dry and idle— when my mother wasn’t around, Father didn’t have much of a sense of humour. She was the only one who could wheedle out a laugh from him that had no edge, no bite, no malice; and to this day, I have no idea how she does it. In the absence of anything else, we spoke about Quidditch, and he commented that he was pleased I had bested Louis Weasley to the position of Beater. ‘The less weasel, the better,’ he had smirked as he rose to buy us another couple of Butterbeers.

 

I rubbed the sleeve of my robe against the window to erase the steam. The pub was as loud and raucous as it usually was when the students descended on the town, filled to the brim with classmates and acquaintances and half-known faces that I passed in the corridors. Some of them peered at me, whispering, and in response I repositioned my Gryffindor scarf more firmly over my shoulders and pointedly ignored them.

 

The street outside was thickly white with snow and the flakes drifted dreamily over the wrapped-up bodies that went by in their coloured scarves and jaunty bobble hats. People I knew tripped by with their arms full of supplies and gifts and treats— there was Professor Longbottom taking an enormous bite out of a Honeydukes hot fudge cookie— there was Millie Anderson wrestling her glove away from something in her vivid orange Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes bag. One curmudgeonly local swerved to avoid a gaggle of students and let her vehement disapproval be so known to them that when she had passed them by in a fit of anger, one of the group turned around and caused a chimneyful of snow to fall squarely on her pointed hat.

 

I had just snorted in laughter at this, when the crowd parted a little. I could see directly across to the bench outside Dervish and Banges, on which a little girl of about four sat, with red cheeks and a bright pink hat it looked like someone had knitted for her. She was clearly wailing, and clearly alone, and just as I was beginning to feel very concerned and responsible for her welfare, Father returned with the drinks, and, to my surprise, a little scroll of parchment that he dropped on the table in front of me alongside my flagon of butterbeer.

 

I wasn’t sure whether to look at the scroll or the crying girl, who was being ignored by the people who passed her. My father’s cool stare was making me nervous, and he finally said: ‘Well, Scorpius? Don’t you want to know what it says?’

 

‘Er….’ I stammered. ‘Sorry, uh, there’s this girl outside, I think she’s lost her mum—‘

 

‘What in Merlin’s name are you talking about?’

 

I had half-risen from the table, my mouth fixed in a fine line of stress, and the classmates whose eyes I were avoiding were staring at my sudden movement. I checked the pink-hatted girl again with a glance.

 

I watched as a head of bright auburn curls sat down beside her, and gently touched her arm.

 

All the blood rushed to my head.

 

‘Scorpius? What in Merlin’s—?’

 

‘It’s fine,’ I said, briskly, sitting back down again, though I was not fine at all. My heart was beating three times faster than normal, and the sound of it was so great it almost droned out the cacophonous background noise of the pub. I stared at my father but my gaze went right through him, and my mind was lost. My mind was lost to her.

 

Father began to speak. I heard something about Grandfather Lucius, something about Diagon Alley, something about ‘old laws.’ Try as I might I couldn’t focus on what he said to me, so jolted I was by Rose Weasley’s sudden appearance at the side of the little lost girl in the pink hat. I had been trying for so long— I had spent about a year trying to push her out of my brain, trying to force myself to like other girls, like Nehan Patil with her long dark plait and her white teeth, who was always trying to pair with me in Potions, or Gretel Kelly and her fluttering, alarming eyelashes— but it was in vain. I saw that now. Distracted by her, my gaze was drawn back to her again and again throughout my father’s monologue.

 

I watched as she coaxed a watery smile from the girl. I watched as she drew her wand out from inside her peacoat, and in a wonderful display of— fairly advanced— magic, she conjured several tiny, white butterfly creatures that burst like shimmering bubbles when the girl reached out with her hand, delighted, to touch them.

 

‘So, Scorpius, you understand, then?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘You understand everything I’ve told you?’

 

‘Yes, Father.’

 

‘You understand, do you? You haven’t really been staring out of the window with that gormless baboon look on your face the entire time, not listening to a word I’ve just said— you can repeat it back to me, can you?’

 

He was angry. His eyes were hard; he looked like a marble carving of some ancient, vengeful warlord— and this was very strange. My father was and is a man of snide remarks and pithy, sudden jibes— his frustrations are expressed in sarcasm and quick venom, and he never gives himself away. I had rarely seen such a fearsome, vulnerable glimmer in his looks: it was as though he was a Legilimens, and was reading my mind, and saw what I felt for a Granger-Weasley.

 

At least, that is what I thought at the time: in retrospect, I realise that it could more easily have been that he had just lost his father, and I, in my ignorance, was paying no attention to my own.

 

‘I’m not going to say it again, Scorpius, so listen carefully this time,’ he snapped, like a snake striking: quick, with a little retreat. A sudden flow, with a followed ebb. ‘Your grandfather left you half his fortune.’

 

The flagon of butterbeer I had raised half an inch from the table to carry to my mouth was dropped, and the liquid slopped over the side.

 

‘This, of course,’ he continued, ‘goes against the usual laws of Malfoy inheritance. Traditionally, it would go to me as the direct son and heir.’

 

 _I don’t want it_ , I thought. _I don’t want it. I don’t want his money._ But my mouth wouldn’t form the words.

 

‘I have a feeling this has something to do with the fact that I married your mother,’ Father continued, briskly now,more businesslike, more wry. It sounded as though he was covering it up again: his true feelings, obscured in sardonicism. ‘As the will stipulated that in order to gain the money, you would have to marry well.’

 

‘“Well?”’ I discovered my voice, choking, thinking suddenly of Rose’s hair, and her butterfly bubbles— but I found her being shaken from my brain as the dull weight of my father’s words fell into me. ‘Marry “well?”’

 

‘A girl of his choosing. He has a list. It was very thorough.’

 

My father smirked, as my rage rose. It rose even further the longer he smirked, waxen, as grey in pallor as he had been from the day my grandfather passed away. The coldness, the fury, settled into my bloodstream and hardened like glass.

 

‘You can have Elladora Flint, if you like? Or Hesper Goyle is an option too, assuming you would like a brood of dimwitted troll children when she’s old enough to bear them….’

 

I recoiled, quite physically, from him, pushing the scroll away from me through the puddle of butterbeer that was congealing around the base of my tankard. Disgust was making me nauseated. I wanted none of Grandfather Lucius’s money even if it came with no ridiculous, archaic stipulations. I would rather be destitute than owe my affluence to the twisted generosity of a man I did not like and had no respect for.

 

I did not want the money of a war criminal, of a Death Eater. I despised it— I despised _him_ , in that moment: Grandfather Lucius.The choices he had made had sharpened the knife I’d lived with all my life, the one held against my throat.

 

I recall now, and recalled then, that during his funeral, a small, horrible, tiny part of me cried out just once and for a fraction of a second: _I am glad that he is dead._

 

Father was not smiling. I wondered again if he knew what I was thinking.

 

‘Are you not going to say anything?’ he asked, quietly.

 

I noticed his eyes lingering on my hands, which were clenching the edge of the table so hard my knuckles gleamed a sickly, lilac-tinged white.

 

I shook my head. I felt myself beginning to shake at the indignity of it— I can laugh a little bit, now, at how melodramatic I was being. But the fact remains that I have always been too serious: a boy who thinks too much; who feels too much. _You_ try being haunted by the decisions of people you can’t run from— _you_ try reacting with equanimity when those same people attempt to control your actions from beyond the grave.

 

I didn’t look at my father. I attempted to breathe deeply instead.

 

I found myself glancing out of the window.

 

Rose was talking to a kindly-looking, harassed old woman: I presumed she was the little girls grandmother. She appeared to be thanking Rose profusely, and was attempting to force something into her hand that Rose was shaking her head to refuse. It looked from this distance like a Honeydukes chocolate bar, with a bright purple wrapper.

 

I imagined, rather than heard, her voice: ‘No, no, don’t be so silly! I couldn’t possibly!’

 

I shivered. An entirely new emotion took over me, one which completely quenched the fury, and left behind only sweet, warm calm, and a strength that stretched down through my feet to the ground.

 

I suppose that was when I knew I loved her. I suppose that was when I knew I would have her, or I would have no one else.

 

Eventually, bashfully, she took the chocolate bar. The little girl hugged Rose’s legs after they stood, and before she left with her grandmother, Rose conjured another little tribe of butterflies for her. I watched the pink bobble-hatted child giggle as she followed their pretty, jaunty flight, popping them as she skipped away.

 

It was almost a surprise to learn that Father was still there, with his face curving once again into an insufferable smirk.

 

‘Of course, Scorpius,’ he said dryly, ‘if you had just read the scroll I had given you, rather than allowing it to drown in your butterbeer, you would have seen that I’ve done what I can to loosen your burden.’

 

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, taken aback.

 

My father sighed. He suddenly seemed older and more drawn than I had ever seen him. ‘Your grandfather was not in his right mind, at the end. He retained his stubbornness, but not his intelligence. Your mother and I were read the will before his death, and straight away I set about getting it changed.’

 

‘Why would you?’

 

I was struck: when he looked at me then, I saw I had wounded him. I saw the brief flash of hurt and disappointment in his eyes, such a change from the solid flintiness of his usual character, so different from the certain, composed figure I had always known.

 

‘The will was _unfair_ , obviously,’ he said, clipped. ‘I might be a little short with you sometimes, Scorpius, but I’m not so inhuman that I would tell you who you can love.’

 

‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered, genuinely ashamed.

 

‘I visited lawyers,’ he continued, seemingly a little mollified. ‘I went to the Ministry. It was difficult, but we succeeded: the new anti-discrimination laws came into effect one day before your grandfather passed away, which would have sealed his last wishes. It’s now illegal to make marriage a condition of inheritance when the marriage is arranged for reasons of blood purity. You now have half of the Malfoy fortune upon your turning seventeen, and don’t have to marry someone not pretty enough to be so brainless.’

 

I opened my mouth, but he interrupted me.

 

‘Scorpius. I know what you’re going to say. Your mother warned me. You don’t have the money yet, but when you turn seventeen you will do, and there are no conditions. You can do anything you want with your half when it is in your hands. You can give it away if you like. You may donate it to charity— if you must. I hear that’s what you _noble Gryffindors_ do.’

 

He almost smiled. I almost smiled back.

 

‘I would advise you to invest it in your future, of course— but now is not the time to talk about this. We’ll consider it again when you are older. In the meantime,’ he said, rising from the chair and offering me his hand to shake as he shrugged on his cloak, ‘I recommend spending more time at your studies and on the Quidditch pitch than you do staring out of windows at Weasley’s.’

 

Before I could respond, my jaw dropping, he cut across me again. ‘We’ll see you for Christmas, son. You can go to the Potters’. Owl us with details. Take care.’

 

And he left me with one swoop of dark grey wool, my grandfathers ebony cane in his leather-gloved hand. I watched him through the window as he brushed along the street, his hair thinner than I had recalled, his head more bowed.

 

I sat in silence, and watched him.

 

When I was growing up, walking anywhere in public with my father was always uncomfortable. People looked at us out of the corner of their eyes, and not in admiration. Their response to our presence varied from affected nonchalance to open hostility: when I was eight years old, a wizard had attempted to hex my father in Flourish and Blotts, but thankfully his aim was poor and he instead set fire to a tower of cooking books stacked by my ankle. I remember the book title— _‘Seven Birds for Seven Brews: Palatable Poultry for a Paltry Price’_ — and I remember even now the smell of its singeing cover, my mothers horror, my father’s clenched jaw.

 

That day, outside the Three Broomsticks, in the innocent snowy streets of Hogsmeade, a circle formed around Draco Malfoy into which no one entered. People looked at my father differently when I was not with him to act as a bridge, a buffer: an unknown entity to which people were more inclined to show curiosity. That day, for the first time, I saw the naked distrust with which they observed him alone. Distrust, disgust….perhaps even a little fear.

 

It was _unjust!_ The anger I felt then, noticing this for perhaps the first time, is familiar to me now. The passing of Grandfather Lucius removed the last real poison of our past. It left behind my Grandmother Cissy— who had saved Harry Potter and could hardly be openly vilified— and Father, whose war-era crimes were committed out of a combination of duty, love, naivete and above all, fear.

 

It was time for our punishment to end.

 

My father, whom I loved, disappeared down a lane in the distance, and the jostling people resumed their normal paths. As the crowd split, the empty bench where Rose had sat was exposed. A flash of memory and there she was again: her huge smile, the unruly red curls bursting out from under her hat. Her kindness to the little lost girl. Her snowy butterflies.

 

It dawned on me that there were two Scorpius’s: the one which belonged to my infamous family, which despite myself I could not help but love and defend; and the one which belonged to myself, which longed to care only for good grades and Quidditch points, and for the chance to kiss Rose Weasley senseless.

 

I did not know if it would ever be possible to bring the two together.

 

 

* * *

 

I was staring at the rich crimson hangings of my bed in the Gryffindor boys dorm. One of my textbooks, (Standard Book of Spells, Grade Six) lay open on my chest, crushing it, but the sensation wasn’t nearly as powerful as the constriction I felt when thinking about Rose and how I’d left her under the arches of the courtyard. In my minds eye I replayed the image of her face—that had been so close to mine, and so tender and open— becoming frozen and hard at my words.

 

I’d fucked up: I really had _fucked up._

 

My hangings, like my thoughts, became more full of shadow with each minute; and as the hours passed, the knowledge of what I’d done became a thicker, gloopier darkness. In time I became irritated by the emptiness of the room: I desperately wanted Albus or one of my other roommates to enter and fill my head with words, stupid banter, irrelevant conversation— anything to distract me from the bottomless pit of self-loathing into which I had fallen.

 

But when they crept in, it was singularly. No one checked to see if I was awake and I did not break the tetchy silence they upheld as they prepared for bed. A few whispers: ‘great night, lads’; something about Olivia Feldswick’s skirt flashing too high when she danced. I didn’t care.

 

Albus entered last, well beyond the others, who had already begun snoring. I heard him stifle a yawn, mutter something, and curse as he banged his knee against the trunk at the foot of my bed as he made his way to his.

 

With a hoarse voice and a lump in my throat I was beginning to worry was permanent, I tentatively whispered: ‘Albus?’

 

‘Shit, Scorp,’ he replied, startled. ‘You’re still awake? Where the _bloody hell_ did you run off to?’

 

‘I—‘

 

‘I checked outside for you like normal, but as I left, Rose was coming in with Lily and Roxy, and I got side-tracked….’

 

‘Oh, right.’ Her name resounded with a dull clang that reverberated awfully, like a brass cymbal clattering to the floor.

 

‘They were drunk. Absolute thickos, no one knows how they got the Firewhisky …..anyway, we had to sneak them to the hospital wing, past the reporters. Mum was raging; you should have seen her, I was afraid for Lils’ nostrils to be honest, thought a Bat-Bogey Hex was coming. I mean she hasn’t used one on any of the family _yet_ , but —‘ I heard him chuckle quietly as he climbed into his pyjamas.

 

‘Rosie was really upset by it too, actually,’ he continued, more softly and slowly, not caring that I hadn’t replied. ‘I reckon she had reason to be, though… It was her big night, y’know, the speech and everything, she’s been preparing for months….they took the shine off a bit. Where did you go, anyway?’

 

I couldn’t bring myself to speak. The lump in my throat had grown to the size of a small apple as he spoke, and to my horror as a seventeen-year-old boy, I felt my eyes burn with tears as the guilt and shame became physical.

 

It was her big night, and I— a _stupid, self-absorbed, melodramatic infant_ — had ruined it for her, carelessly disregarding her feelings and my own in a moment of madness in which I _laughed,_ and admitted myself a slave to the very ideas she had tried to fight against in her speech by the tomb.

 

I wasn’t just an idiot: I had been _cruel._

 

I rolled over so I no longer faced him, and gently lowered my heavy textbook to the floor. Clearing my throat as quietly as possible, my voice still came out ragged and hollow when I muttered: ‘I just needed a bit of space.’

 

Al said nothing, and by the rustle of sheets he scrambled under his covers.

 

‘Ah well,’ he said finally. I could tell he was irritated at me— he was becoming snippy.‘You missed out, pal. I know you don’t like parties, but this was a good one. And I mean, people _like_ seeing you there.’

 

Silently, I begged for him to stop.

 

‘My dad wanted to talk to you,’ he continued, oblivious to my inner resistance, determined to torture me. ‘I think he wanted to talk to you about what you want to do after school, he knows some people in St Mungo’s he can put you in touch with about Healing, maybe get you a weeks work experience or whatever…’

 

‘Al, please.’

 

I heard him sit up, suddenly. As though it would help me to hear him, as though his hushed voice wasn’t the loudest, sharpest thing in the room as it was. ‘My point is Scorp, you need to stop fucking running.’

 

‘Al—‘

 

’Nah, mate, listen. I’m your best friend, I know you. And I know that the real reason you weren’t in the Hall tonight is cause you don’t think you belong there, and I’m here to tell you that isn’t true.’

 

I was quiet. The tears were rolling sideways down my face, making my pillow damp.

 

‘To be honest,’ Albus continued, darkly, ‘I’m actually really quite pissed at you. If it wasn’t two in the morning and if I hadn’t drank a fair bit from Fred’s hip flask, I don’t reckon I’d be saying this to you at all. Scorp,’ he said, ‘you can’t keep being the fucking victim of a past that isn’t yours. I saw you listening to Rose today: you heard what she said. Everyone is ready to move on from the war. Everyone’s ready to move into the future. And, to be frank, if you can’t see that my family cares for you, you’re not just oblivious: you’re a fucking moron.’

 

I squeezed my eyes shut. There was a stretch of about thirty seconds in which we could only hear one another breathing.

 

‘Stop running away,’ he said, finally, into the dark.

 

‘You done?’ I croaked.

 

‘Yeah.’

 

The room was quiet again but for the snores of our dorm mates behind their closed hangings and the dying embers of the coal in the wood burner. Moonlight streamed in through the windows and cast diamonds into the swirling dust motes. I remembered my walk away from the gates earlier through the grounds, I remembered my day. I felt exhausted. I could almost smell Roses’s perfume in the cool summer air, and feel the rush of her breath at my neck, and the cool pale whisper of her skin.

 

‘I’m in love with Rose,’ I whispered.

 

My words seemed to hang as suspended as a cobweb between two blades of grass, between two threads of sunlight: it was like a bubble just blown into the air where the wind may catch it.

 

Albus sighed. ‘I know,’ he said.

 

And the bubble burst, gently, like the butterflies she had cast on that December day in Hogsmeade.

 

I immediately felt stronger. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

 

‘Don’t apologise for that.’

 

‘I won’t— I’m not. I mean, I’m sorry for the rest of it. I’m useless, I’m a prat, I’m— I’m sorry for everything.’

 

I meant it. I felt suddenly alive and awake; I rubbed my wrists into my wet eyes and dried them with the sleeve of the white shirt I hadn’t changed out of.

 

‘It’s fine,’ Al said dryly. ‘Just remember what I said, right? And fix it. I don’t want to have to bring out a Mum-style lecture every time you go off on one, okay?’

 

‘Better hope these bastards are all asleep,’ I said, my voice cracking a bit at the edges like a frayed hem.

 

‘I cast a Muffliato when I came in,’ he replied, chuckling quietly.

 

‘Just as well. Wouldn’t want them thinking you’ve been possessed by the ghost of Madam Puddifoot, or that woman who writes the Agony Aunt thing for the _Prophet_ …’

 

‘Better out than in, buddy.’

 

‘I thought that only applied to burps?’

 

‘Burps, and deep heartfelt emotions.’

 

‘If Celestina Warbeck met Hagrid after the Welcoming Feast.’

 

He laughed softly. ‘Now that would definitely a sight to behold.’

 

I found myself smiling, too.

 

‘Are Lily and Roxy okay?’ I asked, with no small drop of concern.

 

‘Physically? They’re fine. Emotionally? I think Lils will get over the lecture Mum gave her in about twenty years if she gets a lot of help. I don’t even know where Auntie Angie took Rox. Maybe Azkaban. Maybe Knockturn Alley to get the demons exorcised out of her.’

 

I breathed a laugh. The warmth of the night and the falling silence settled in about me like a soft blanket, but I still couldn’t rest. I stared at the canopy of my bed again, with new eyes and knitted eyebrows. It had been an eventful day, and I should have been shattered— in certain ways I was. In some ways, I felt like I was a small and vulnerable thing, a rabbit maybe, that had been skinned… and each slight movement in the air should have been enough to knock me over, make me feel pain, make me tremble like the slightest leaf on its autumn stalk.

 

In other ways, I felt like I was rooted in the ground and my spine was growing stronger and more sturdy with each moment I remained still.

 

Eventually Albus muttered a muffled: ‘Night, Scorp;’ but I remained awake. I couldn’t sleep. I waited until he, too, succumbed to snores, and I was surrounded by the usual nighttime cacophony— I knew from experience that this somnolent chorus would subside at around three o’clock, sometimes four, and then I would be able to fall asleep in peace.

 

I felt I would never be peaceful again.

 

Swinging my legs out of the bed, I shuffled into a pair of slippers and shrugged my dressing gown on over my clothes.

 

My mind thick with plans of what I would do when I saw her again, I went off to the tranquil, nocturnal kitchens in search of a decent cup of tea.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Sorry it's taken me so bloody long to get another chapter up. I had a bit of a mental block about how to deal with the debris of the last chapter and get to the conclusion of it all, but I think I've got a better idea now. Hopefully the foray into the past wasn't too intolerable- I really felt it was necessary for a bit more insight into Scorp's relationship with Draco to understand why he flipped out.
> 
> I have the next chapter, from Rose's PoV, already written, so hopefully will be up soon....very soon, if I procrastinate hard enough!
> 
> Please let me know what you think :)


	6. RW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His voice filled my brain like some sticky, warped substance: his quiet ‘no.'

RW

 

 

Aunt Ginny’s face had just returned to its normal colouring after several hours of being puce. My Uncle Harry was rubbing small circles between her shoulder blades with one hand, and while he was doing a very good job of appearing calm enough to soothe his wife, I could tell he was feeling strained. This was unsurprising, considering he had spent most of the night with my parents pretending everything was fine to the inquisitive press while the rest of his family were trying to prevent his fifteen-year-old daughter and niece from swigging more Firewhisky, stuffing more Hippogriff dung into the legs of more suits of armour, and causing a scandal that would taint the family for more than a reasonable amount of time.

I was beginning to get a headache of incredible proportions, but privately I was glad of all the activity, and glad of the distraction my cousins had caused. It meant I didn’t have to think about what had happened between Scorpius and I. I didn’t have to think of his blatant idiocy, and my silly desperation, the very thought of which made my ears burn crimson below the curtain of my hair.

As it currently stood, I was standing at the door of the Hospital Wing attempting to persuade my Aunt and Uncle that it was okay for them to leave, and leave their daughter in my safe (if passive-aggressive) hands.

‘Listen, Aunt Gin, Madam Abbott says it’s all right, she’s only in here for observation now. She’s been given the potion of charcoal and all there is to do now is to wait for it to work, she’ll sleep it off. I’ll keep her company for a while and come back straight away in the morning, I promise.’

Aunt Gin’s pretty face was marked by one solid wrinkle of worry running between her knitted eyebrows.

The worry was a new thing. Before the worry, it had just been rage, expressed in a colourful flurry of words and threats and volleys of retribution I had previously only witnessed in the tirades of Grandma Molly. Lily had looked like a small and crumpled and crying rag doll being flung about and wrung through by her mothers storm, and though I couldn’t help but feel she deserved it, I felt pity for her as I watched. Certainly there was very little need for anybody else to get involved….and I was now very certain by the defeated slump in Lily’s shoulders that there was very little chance that this sort of thing would ever happen again.

‘Rose is right,’ Uncle Harry said, sharing a glance with me, ‘there’s not much we can do for her right now—‘

‘I wish she hadn’t been given the charcoal,’ Aunt Gin muttered mutinously, hugging herself and swaying slightly on the balls of her feet. ‘She should be able to _feel_ the hangover in the morning—‘

‘I’m sure she’s taken what you said seriously,’ Uncle Harry reassured her, his mouth twitching.

Behind him, the door opened and my parents entered, both wearing the slightly frozen faces of people under a lot of strain.

‘Bloody hell, that was a nightmare,’ Dad said, huffing as though he had run through the corridors to get here. ‘Fobbed them off by telling Oliver in front of the new editor for the _Practical Potioneer_ that James was considering a career with Charlie and the Cypriot manticores. It kicked off a right storm…if you ask me, I think Wood could do with a tranquillising hex to the arse—‘

‘Ronald!’

‘Well, ‘Mione, he was always a bit of a nut—‘

‘Teddy told me that Victoire and Fleur hijacked the situation with a baby photoshoot as well,’ Uncle Harry put in. ‘It wasn’t planned for another month, and of course they’ll lose the royalties from _International Witch,_ but needs must, it was good of them…’

‘Where did George and Angelina take Roxanne?’ my mother asked, running a hand through her bushy hair as she always did when harassed. ‘Were they seen leaving?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Uncle Harry replied. ‘Hannah gave them a flask of the charcoal remedy and they left by the back path to their place above the Hogsmeade shop.’

‘Hannah?’ I asked.

‘Madam Abbott, to you,’ Dad said, nudging me and giving me a half-smile which I wearily returned.

‘Where are the other kids?’ Mum asked me.

‘Al and James and Fred are off to bed,’ I said. ‘They left about five minutes ago. I haven’t seen Hugo all night.’

‘Wasn’t it planned that you would say something at the end to everyone, Harry?’ Mum asked, turning to my uncle with a hesitant frown on her face.

Aunt Ginny interrupted him before he could reply with a loud, exasperated groan. ‘ _What?!_ You mean this _bloody_ party isn’t over yet?!’

The ‘Golden Trio’ shared an awkward glance as Aunt Ginny buried her face in one of her hands.

Quietly, Mum nudged Dad and looked at him pointedly, and as he stifled a yawn, they both passed by me to walk over to say good night to Lily in her bed in the far corner.

I caught Aunt Ginny watching her daughter through her fingers, again with worry. I touched her arm, and her warm brown eyes looked at me, wet at the corners.

‘Honestly,’ I said softly, ‘I’ll stay with her as long as she needs me, and I’ll be right here in the morning again. You should go home and get some sleep, and maybe come visit in the afternoon if you’re up to it.’

She reached up and squeezed my hand, and then sighed with defeat and tiredness, as though all the fight had been knocked out of her. ‘All right.’

‘Plus, Gin,’ Uncle Harry said, smiling tentatively, ‘You’re probably not the person she most wants to see right now after….all that.’ He grimaced as she snorted, conceding defeat. ‘Let it all sink in for a bit, let her think about what she did…and, I mean, she’ll probably still get a bit of a headache.’

She nodded silently, seemingly too tired for any further resistance, and moved from us to collect her outer robes which were at Lily’s bedside.

I was about to follow her when Uncle Harry stopped me, touching my shoulder.

‘Rose?’ he said, ‘Before you run away, and before you let all this mêlée take over, I just want to make sure you know that you did really well today. I really meant what I said earlier, that speech was…it was something else. Just what the wizarding world needed to hear. I hope you’re proud of yourself.’

The wounds of the day were still raw and sore, and no praise from my uncle was going to heal them: however, like a cool balm, they made me feel a little stronger. I smiled genuinely. ‘Thanks, Uncle Harry. I am.’

‘Thanks for looking after her,’ he added, nodding at his daughter propped up miserably on her pillow. ‘I bet you didn’t need that.’

‘Well, we’ve all been there,’ I joked.

‘I’ll not tell your parents you said that,’ he grinned.

They said their goodbyes, and Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny left just before my parents. Aunt Ginny had to almost surgically detach herself from Lily, who had begun to cry again as they hugged. At the door again, I hugged Dad, then Mum, and they were about to leave before my mother stopped, and swung around again with a new lease of life not normally seen in people beyond the midnight hour of a weekday.

‘Rosie! I forgot to mention—‘

She threw her arms around me again and I was engulfed in her sweet-smelling hair.

‘—I was speaking to the _Prophet_ editor and he wants to print your speech in full as part of the memorial coverage! Isn’t that fantastic—?’

‘Our little Rosie,’ Dad said, ruffling my hair and hugging me after Mum had had her turn. ‘Out for your own Chocolate Frog card, are you?’

‘Aren’t you happy, darling?’ Mum asked, peering at me and my forced smile. I stared right back into her eyes and I found I couldn’t bear the concern written there— they said to me, _‘you can tell me anything,’_ and of course I couldn’t. What would I say?

_Scorpius Malfoy rejected me, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to behave. I’m not okay. Help me._

‘Oh, no— that’s great. It’s great. Wonderful,’ I finally managed to splutter, but my insincerity was such that even Dad frowned in concern. ‘I’m really happy, it’s just— I’m _tired_ , that’s all. It’s been—‘ I fought back against the tears that threatened to overwhelm me. ‘It’s been a long day.’

Mum did not look convinced. Just like Aunt Ginny had, she reached out and squeezed my hand tightly, and then she hugged me again. Into my hair she said: ‘We have to go wrap this up, but write me tomorrow, as soon as you can. I love you.’

I nodded as we broke apart, and said over the lump in my throat: ‘I love you both.’

Dad kissed me on the forehead. ‘Love you too, Rosie Poo.’

‘Shut up, Ronald,’ Mum and I said, unanimously and automatically.

I could hear him laugh in his buttercream way all the way down the corridor.

For a moment I paused before I turned around, just to breathe slowly. My headache throbbed in the quiet that overwhelmed the room when at last I closed the creaking door— the new, oppressive silence. Nothing to fill it. The night had stopped flowing, the last ripples were fading, the world was slowly taking shape again.

But it was not bouncing back into shape unaltered. This was an uglier night than any previous nights had been…uglier, crueller. More painful, like a hole had been cut in my heart and the wound was bleeding, and the love I had held inside there was leaking out to a greater extent with every movement I made. Every movement I made in the new, hollow silence.

I pressed a wrist into my temple and screwed my eyes shut. I hadn’t known a boy could make you feel like this: so undercut, so adrift, so utterly humiliated, and in such obvious pain.

His voice filled my brain like some sticky, warped substance: his quiet _‘no.’_

It cut into me like a knife blade, that single phrase, and because I had repressed it for hours now it cut all the cleaner.

What I wanted more than anything, and what I would have given almost anything for, was the chance to crawl into bed and let the exhaustion overcome me. I wanted sleep to alleviate my sore bones and numb my thoughts into something I would be more able to deal with tomorrow. I wanted to be alone— I wanted to cry quietly where no one could see or hear me— I wanted all my anguish out in the open air where I could, in solitude, learn to manage it. I wanted this because I wanted to be able to walk into the Great Hall tomorrow morning with my shoulders back, walking proud and tall— I wanted Scorpius Malfoy to know that he could be as backward and heartless as he liked, but he would never shatter me.

Or at least: he would never see the Rose he had shattered.

‘Rosie? Rose?’

Lily’s throaty voice floated to me as though through a murky fog.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ I replied shakily.

‘Please come here,’ she said.

Duly, I summoned up the energy to turn around and obey.

Her face was white as a sheet on the bed, with a grey-green undertone. We had given her jugs and jugs of water; Hugo had brought food from the kitchen. The potion of charcoal would help— it absorbed the alcohol in her stomach— but the fact remained that she had very nearly poisoned herself. One shot more, Madam Abbott had said, and Lily would have woken up tomorrow in St Mungo’s.

I felt a surge of anger towards her again, but I remembered Aunt Ginny’s fury, and I saw enough misery and regret on Lily’s face to prevent myself from making any further reproach.

She wouldn’t meet my eye. Sighing, I slumped down on the chair at her bedside, and gave her a hair tie. Sheepishly, she took it from me and proceeded to wind up her normally glorious, but now lank red hair into a haphazard bun.

Licking her lips, which were cracked and dry, she meekly murmured her thanks.

Wondering what on earth I had done in a past life to merit being born into such a family, I rolled my eyes, dug my hand into my pocket, and produced a battered tin of lip balm which I offered to her.

Lily looked at it, and her lower lip trembled.

‘Oh, no, Lils, come on—‘

She took it from me with a shaking hand, tears pouring down her cheeks quietly. Her spine shuddered with sobs as she messily applied the balm to her lips. ‘I’m s-so s-sorry Rosie, I’m so s-stupid—‘

‘Yes.’

‘Merlin’s ho-holy b-beard….’

Leaning forward, I hugged her and let her cry into my shoulder. We stayed like that for a long time, until her ribs calmed, until her breathing became more even and less shallow, until she noticed that I was humming a Weird Sisters tune in time with the rubs I was giving her back.

‘Is that…?’

‘The early 90’s masterpiece “Werewolves Cry At Dawn,”’ I nodded as she disentangled herself from me, laughing in a thick, snottery sort of way. She wiped her tears on the bedsheets, which made no mark: all her mascara had already been cried away. ‘I know you like all that retro stuff.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling, a faint glint of her usual rogueish humour coming back into her eyes. ‘Thank you so much for being here. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry— I can’t believe myself— we just got carried away— we didn’t know how much—‘

I raised a finger to shush her. ‘Shut up, Lils. It’s over. You won’t do it again.’

Her eyes widened in horror and she groaned. ‘No, I bloody well won’t.’

‘Well,’ I smiled tightly. ‘There’s nothing more to be said.’

I squeezed her hand.

‘It was supposed to be your day, Rose,’ she said quietly, sadly. ‘We hijacked that.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I replied, sure that if she said one more word along this vein that I would break down the middle. ‘I’m fine.’

‘No, Rosie,’ she said animatedly, shaking her head, raising herself half- out of the covers, ‘You put all that work in and you pulled it off and everyone was really giving you the credit you deserve, and I don’t know, I felt sure that something was finally going to happen with you and Scorpius—‘

‘Lily—‘

‘— And I am sure that that is who you were with under the archways before you found us, am I right? Was it him? I don’t remember much but I remember a blonde head—‘

‘Lily—‘

‘—And I know that every time I mention this you always insist that nothing is there but he _worships_ you, if you could just see that, and you clearly _really like_ him—‘

‘ _Lily—!_ ‘

‘— I just thought it would be tonight? Was it? Did something….?’

She paused. ‘You’ve gone all white, Rose.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Rose—‘

My voice broke on the first word and I stammered the rest. ‘I— I’ll tell you about it. Soon. At some point. But not now. I’m so tired.’

Her pretty, sickly face was full of concern. I noticed dimly that her eyebrows knitted in the same way as Aunt Ginny’s; she had the same depression above her nose when her face scrunched up, in exactly the same place. It was exactly the same shape. I say I noticed it dimly: it was because I felt like someone had skewered me and put me over a bright and full flame. I knew my face was as crimson as my hair; I knew my ears were almost maroon without having to look. But I refused to break down properly in front of Lily— breaking down in front of anyone would be a torment, but breaking down in front of a little cousin who was more of a little sister was even more mortifying. And I knew that when I woke up in the morning, breaking down to anyone, anyone at all, over the heartbreak caused by a mere boy would be out of the question.

Maybe Lily, knowing me as well as she did, sensed some of this. She averted her eyes again, she poured me a glass of water which I sipped. She waited until I broke the silence.

‘It’s late,’ I said, calm at last. ‘We should both be getting to sleep. You were supposed to go to sleep like three hours ago. Do you want me to stay here? I’m sure Madam Abbott—‘

‘No, Rose,’ Lily said gently, ‘Go to your bed. I’ll be fine. What’s going to happen? I’m already in the bloody hospital wing.’

I half-smiled, and clambered to my feet. ‘All right then, squirt. Do you want anything? Cup of tea? Slice of toast?’

She grimaced. ‘I’ve been given enough toast tonight to last me a lifetime. Hope it goes some way to soaking up my mistakes.’

I laughed. ‘The charcoal might manage that if you give it long enough.’

‘I’ll give it as long as it needs.’

I gave her one last hug. ‘First thing you need in the morning is a shower,’ I told her. ‘You reek of Hippogriff dung.’

‘I’m still disappointed that prank won’t happen. It was a good one.’

I smirked. ‘You think I let all your hard work go to waste? I gave the leg to Fred before the adults got hold of it. You’re still stinking out that corridor, Potter.’

For the second time that night, I closed the door of the Hospital Wing on the laugh of someone I loved.

The corridors were cold and dark; my hands trembled. I’m not certain if that was from the atmosphere or just the general weariness, the great and horrible weight of a day I wanted more than anything to be rid of.

One day, I thought. One day it will all be a stupid, silly memory that I can look back on and laugh at. One day I’ll be off somewhere else, in some other country maybe; a curse breaker like Uncle Bill, with my head so full of Egyptian sand and enchanted scarab beetles that I have no room to think of past hurts and embarrassments. One day I’ll never have to think of a Malfoy ever again.

As I passed the door in the Entrance Hall that led to the kitchen and the Hufflepuff common rooms, I paused.

Lily would want a good breakfast tomorrow, wouldn’t she? What if I requested one of her favourites— I could leave a note for the house elves— maybe the special bagels they brought out the days after Quidditch matches, the ones loaded with cream cheese and served with bacon and eggs and mushrooms….

Figuring that a quick detour in the thoughtful service of others wouldn’t count as prolonging an already unnecessarily long day since it would definitely ratchet up my levels of good karma, I swerved into the corridor, found the portrait, tickled the pear and…

Raffish blond head bowed slightly over a freshly brewed mug of tea which he stirred with a teaspoon, Scorpius Malfoy stood at the worktop wearing a dressing gown the colour of midnight and ridiculous fluffy carpet slippers. The kettle on the hob still steamed behind him, and he was tall enough that the low-hanging pots and pans were sure to be an issue.

I inhaled sharply, and his head snapped up, brutally colliding with a frying pan in the process.

‘What the—?!’

Full of sudden agony, I began to laugh.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaand this is probably my quickest update yet! Procrastination is truly wonderful. The next chapter is written, so it won't be long...
> 
> This was always going to be a story about one night, but dearie me, what a night they are having! 
> 
> Please let me know what you think! I love a wee review :) x


	7. SM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Why don’t you just spit it out and call me Weasley like you want to? After all, that’s all we are, isn’t it, according to you?! One Weasley and one Malfoy, not two people who just want to—’ 
> 
> _Who just want to— what? ___

SM

 

Rose was laughing. Coldly, yes— slightly maniacally— but at least she was laughing.

Meanwhile, I was wincing, and in a lot of pain. Stars flashed behind my eyes. I reached out clumsily, blindly, to stop the jostled pots and pans from becoming a loud calamity that would wake up the sleeping house-elves.

‘ _Muffliato_ ,’ she cast, her laughter dying in the air and leaving behind a bitter echo, as the noise of the clattering metal was muted.

The silence was horrible. She did not move from the door, and looked at me blankly, resolute, as though I was a punishment she had to accept and endure.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’ she asked, monotone.

I could not respond. My hands were shaking so nervously I had to hide them by grasping the counter at my back. I had half-spilled my tea on the work board, dropping the mug about an inch when she had surprised me— I could feel the gruesomely warm liquid stain the back of my shirt.

All of the things I had planned to say to her— including the apology I had half-prepared in my head on the way down here from Gryffindor Tower— had disappeared from my memory, and I spent a few moments desperately scrabbling to remember their content. I’m sure none of them involved explaining the nature of my night-time wanderings. In fact, I was one-hundred per cent certain most of them involved quietly asking to speak to her after class and explaining myself reasonably, and I think one or two ideas even proposed writing her a letter in order to allow me to gather my thoughts together better.

Naturally, I was not prepared for meeting her in my dressing gown and slightly embarrassing carpet slippers in the deserted kitchens at two in the morning.

‘I’m having a cup of tea,’ I said, bluntly.

There was a pause. Our eyes met: hers narrow and skeptical, mine probably looking a little unhinged. I could almost see the distain dripping from her long lashes. Her dark red hair was chaotic, her cheeks burning a real and violent crimson, and her arms were crossed defensively over her chest. I still felt the wet clamminess of the tea at my shirt.

Though my hands shook, I knew my face was composed. It might appear as an impassive mask— an occupational hazard of being a Malfoy— but I silently reflected in this moment of anguish that if I tried to make it full of meaning in some way I was sure to look at the very least insincere, and almost certainly constipated.

‘Right.’

The clipped and unimpressed delivery of this reply made me wonder if she was a Legilimens.

‘Fine,’ she continued, suddenly bustling, pulling a scrap of parchment from her pocket and a tiny pencil, and scribbling something on it to tuck behind the house elves’ cork board. ‘Well. I’m going to leave this order for Lily’s breakfast and then— well, if you _don’t_ mind, I’ve had _more_ than enough Hippogriff dung for one day, so I’m going to—‘

‘No, don’t!’ I blurted.

I winced as the sudden exclamation provoked a stab of pain where the frying pan had hit me.

Rose shook her head as I blinked through my watering eyes.

‘I can’t deal with this again, Scorpius.’

She was backing away— she was turning—

‘Please!’

Another wave of pain hit me mid-action as I automatically reached for her. Wondering if this could be the least convenient time in the world anyone has ever developed a concussion, I found that I had grabbed her wrist. ‘Rosie, wait—‘

‘Oh-ho-ho, ‘ _Rosie,’_ now, is it?!’ she hissed, swinging back around and jerking her hand out of my grip in one movement. ‘Are you obtuse?! What on _Earth_ makes you think you can call me that—?!’

‘Rose, please—‘

‘Why don’t you just _spit it out_ and call me Weasley like you want to? After all, that’s all we _are_ , isn’t it, according to you?! One Weasley and one Malfoy, not two people who just want to—’

She stopped suddenly, and left the sentence hanging. Uncertainty overcame fury.

_Who just want to— what?_

Rose’s eyes were dark, brimming with tears, and her mouth was set in one stern, pursed line in a failing attempt to keep her bottom lip from wobbling. Her arms remained crossed protectively over her chest, but this time it seemed a little less as though she was defending herself against me than she was trying to hold herself together. She began to bite the end of one shirtsleeve. The bags below her eyes were deep and her skin was so pale that her freckles seemed to stand out more clearly against it, like the speckles on an egg.

‘That’s not how I think it is,’ I said quietly, truthfully. ‘That’s— that’s how I’m _afraid_ it is.’

She glared at me again. Still steely, still honest, still formidable, despite her tiredness. Despite that I had hurt her, and, for all she knew, would cause her further pain in a few moments.

I looked at my hand, which had reached out automatically to touch her arm again, gently. Not possessively.

I made a silent vow that I would never hurt her again.

‘You ought to _think_ before you speak,’ Rose hissed.

While she did not pull away from my touch, she did not lean into it either, and would not look at me, staring instead at one of the torch brackets on the wall beyond my shoulder.

‘Rose,’ I said. My voice shook and her eyes snapped to mine. ‘I am so sorry for what happened in the courtyard. More than anything— if I could go back, I’d—‘

‘You’d what? I don’t care if you’re sorry _now,_ ’ she said, with a deadly softness, taking a step closer to me: my heartbeat quickened. ‘I care that you did it in the first place. I care that you feel so strongly about our families that it made you turn against me in a— in a _second_ —‘

‘It wasn’t about our families,’ I insisted.

_‘“It’s because I’m a Malfoy, and you don’t know what that means”?’_

I remained silent. The words— my own words— seemed harsh and foolish, and I didn’t know how to respond. I felt like I was diminishing under her scrutiny, fading away like a shadow with the light shone on.

‘What does that sound like, Scorpius?’

Her voice was scathing. Her eyes burned.

‘It wasn’t— it wasn’t about that,’ I protested, my mouth dry. She was far too close to me, and it was as though the air was alight with electricity. I could barely think, never mind speak. ‘It was about—‘

What _had_ it been it about? What had I meant?

‘About _what?_ ’ she prompted, in such a familiarly insufferable way I wanted more than anything to reach for her and kiss the smugness off her mouth.

‘I meant that it’s harder…being part of my family…’

‘Than it is being part of mine?’ she finished for me, her eyebrows raised.

I nodded.

‘What a load of bollocks.’

_‘What?’_

I gazed down at her, dumbfounded.

Rose said nothing, but held my gaze with defiance.

In disbelief, I felt my neck growing hot. My temper flared, and before I could control it I spoke: recklessly, and in the same condescending tone I knew my father used when he was feeling particularly attacked.

‘So you somehow think—’ I could feel my lip curl in a sneer but couldn’t stop it— ‘that being the daughter of two of _the most honoured wizards of all time_ is as difficult as belonging to a family of war criminals and pure-blood fanatics stretching back centuries?’

‘Yes,’ she said coolly, matching the disparaging expression on my face with one of her own.

‘I thought you were supposed to be smart.’

’Scorpius—‘ she interjected, unsettled, but I cut across her.

‘I thought you _understood,_ I thought you _could see_ —! Rose, we are _hated!_ Do you even know what that means? How it feels?’

‘No, but—‘

‘You can’t even imagine. You see, _you,_ Rose, I know what _you_ go through, I hang about with Al— people _smile_ at you when they see you, they thank you— they actually thank _you!_ — in the street, as if it was _you_ that was responsible for any of it! Al gets his hand shaken and his feet kissed as though he’d broken Voldemort’s neck himself and with his bare hands—!’

The words were running out of my mouth in a torrent, an avalanche made of ice and dirt.

‘You are worshipped because you exist,’ I continued, watching as her face twisted in opposition, ‘while me, Tony Nott, Phillippa Zabini and the rest, we’re all _deplored._ As soon as someone knows my name, something in their eye changes, you can see it, it’s like a door closing— have _you_ ever had that? No, of course you haven’t—’

‘Scorp—’

‘—wasn’t that what your whole speech was about earlier, anyway, Rose? Or were all those fancy, goody-two-shoes words just for show?’

‘You _moron!_ ’ she finally hissed, her eyes brimming with angry tears. She punctuated her insult by slamming the heel of her hand against the worktop at my back: she was close enough to do this, now.

‘Oh, _I’m_ the moron?’

‘Yes, you— you sneering— sanctimonious— fucking— _leech!_ If you’d just _let me speak_ you’d realise that that’s not my point—the type of pressure is different, but the immensity is the same!’

‘In what _possible_ way?!’

‘Do you think I want to make speeches?’ she cried, so close to me I could feel the static rise between us, setting my nerves alight. ‘Do you think I _wanted_ to spend my childhood meeting diplomats, and nodding politely, and never being free to put a foot wrong, and taking care of my idiot cousins? Do you think I enjoy living with the knowledge that I’ll never live up to people’s expectations of me? Do you think I like waking up every single morning and realising I have to bear the burden of living up to the heroism and perfection of my mum and dad— that I have to be the brightest witch of _my_ age, just as my mother was in hers?!’

Rose was no longer on the verge of tears. Now there was only vehemence.

‘I know its not easy for you,’ she continued, exhaling with the immensity of her confession, ‘and I know that being universally loved isn’t as difficult as being universally hated… but, Scorpius, I gave you more credit. I thought you could recognise that you’re not the only one who wants to live on their own terms. I thought you could consider that I might have my reasons for wanting to be apart from my family, too.’

I swallowed.

When she looked back at me, her arms crossed and hugging herself again, she wasn’t angry, she was drained. I wasn’t angry either. I remained silent, and so did she. We watched one another as our breath steadied.

The part of her I had always recognised across the common room, the classroom, the dinner table, the library desk, stared back at me in the dark blue pool of her eyes. Somewhere within them was the bright flame that drove her, the deep part of her that drew me: the part that made me imagine myself as a moth taken captive by her light.

Somehow we both knew when our eyes met that, at heart, we were the same. With that realisation, I unbuckled.

‘I—I don’t know how to deal with it,’ I stammered at last. ‘It feels like something hanging over me all the time, something I can’t get away from…’

Rose Weasley peered at me with building softness, the curves of her face smudging to me like some impressionist painting: two bright, luminous dots of eyes, and her parted pink lips a smear.

‘I know,’ she said, and added more quietly: ‘me too.’

‘But, Scorpius,’ she began, a little more hesitantly, ‘I know Albus feels the same as I do. And your preoccupation with your being a Malfoy doesn’t seem to be an issue when you’re with him— it’s only with me. I want to know why.’

My mouth went dry. I licked my lips. ‘Rose,’ I said shakily, ‘I think you know why.’

‘Not good enough,’ she said crisply, with distain. ‘You crushed me tonight, Scorpius. You _crushed_ me. I don’t know what I was expecting— God knows I didn’t walk out into the courtyard expecting some sort of declaration— I just wanted to _talk_ to you. Just to talk.’

‘I wanted that too.’

Rose scoffed slightly. She shook her head. And she began to turn away again—

‘No!’ I reached out for her, catching her wrist once more but releasing it almost immediately when I felt her cool skin. ‘Rosie, please. At least let me explain.’

She looked at my hand, now stretched out between us— and to my mortification it was shaking violently. As soon as I noticed I cringed inwardly and pushed it back behind me to grip onto the worktop again.

Rose didn’t move. Instead, she raised her chin and nodded somewhat imperiously for me to continue. Only a strained swallow let her discomfort be known.

‘I know I’ve been such a prick,’ I began, heart throbbing madly. ‘I behaved awfully to you and I can’t apologise enough, I’ll never stop apologising, if that’s what you want me to do— but please, when I said what I did about being a Malfoy— what I meant was that I feel, sometimes, like certain things are outside of my control— I feel as though it’s my duty to be and act a certain way— Rose, I’ve spent my whole life thinking about my family. I feel like I owe them something, but I don’t know what parts they get to have.’

It was becoming clearer even to me as I spoke. One hand came up to push away at my hair, but it trembled too, to the extent that I hid it again. Always: nerves, nerves. And here was this incredible girl I was struggling to deserve, and she was listening to me with a hard, curious look on her face I didn’t understand.

‘Whenever I make any sort of decision, I’m always thinking constantly: is it me that is making this choice, or is it the Malfoy in me? As a Weasley, at least you don’t always have to question where your good impulses come from, or your bad. Rose, I just—‘

I couldn’t look at her. I was struggling. There was too much emotion in me, and too few words to say it with.

‘In my core, in my _soul_ — that’s where I’ve held you. All this time. All those stupid days in the library, studying— all those times I’ve looked for you in the crowd at Quidditch—and today when you remembered about Tony Nott and I felt actually _alive_ —Rose, you’ve just been some dream I had. Some ludicrous, pipe dream. But tonight, in the moment I felt that all those dreams I had might actually happen— when you said, ‘ _I know you without words’_ — I knew what you meant, Rose, of course I did, but it felt too good. There had to be something wrong. I saw the reality, the reality came back in, and the reality is that I’m a Malfoy, and if we ever…you know…became close, then maybe people would start closing doors on you when you deserve the whole world wide open. I wouldn’t want that—‘

‘Well, Scorpius. Don’t you think that’s my choice?’ she said, slowly, dwelling on every syllable— gently, without any sort of mocking.

‘Of course. Of course it is.’

Rose— looking a little bewildered, a little overwhelmed— took a moment to collect herself. I exhaled, completely exhausted: and then it dawned on me that this whole thing could just be a dream, a real one. Perhaps I had dozed off upstairs, and my tortured brain was punishing me for what happened in the courtyard by exposing me like this. The worktop was providing me with no solidity, no support any more. I didn’t feel strong, I didn’t feel weak— I just felt _weary,_ bone-tired…

Relieved. That was what it was: relief. I was relieved I had said it: that she finally knew. The years of longing had finally reached a critical point, on this terrible night in the Hogwarts kitchens.

May 2nd. With the house-elves soundly asleep in the next room.

She ran a hand through her hair, its curls messier and burning redder than ever against her skin, falling over her neat shoulders. She smiled, suddenly: her blue eyes were bright as stars. Perhaps it was just that all the strain leaving my body had left me particularly vulnerable, but in that moment she was so incandescently beautiful I almost couldn’t look at her.

Finally, she said: ‘You think too much, Scorpius. One thing you haven’t considered is whether or not I think that _I_ deserve _you._ ’

I laughed, a little humourlessly. ‘That’s not even a question.’

‘I think it is,’ she said softly. ‘You don’t even know how you look to people at all, do you? You spend all that time trapped in your head punishing yourself for what you can’t control and you don’t notice what you are.’

Taking my hand again, Rose traced the lines of my palm with her fingers like she had done in the moonlight of the courtyard, my hand stilling itself at her soothing touch. ‘You’re a good person, Scorpius. In the same way as I am. And one day you’ll know it. I— I’ll teach you,’ she said falteringly, ‘If you’ll let me.’

I couldn’t breathe. I caught her hand in mine. ‘Of course.’

Her ears turned pink. She whispered: ‘You know how much I care for you. You, and your name, and whatever else I can have of you.’

My heart thudding, I murmured the words before I knew what I was saying.

‘Can I kiss you?’

The corners of her mouth twitched upwards in a smile.

‘Please do.’

Until the moment our lips touched, I thought my heart might explode with the speed at which it was racing.

Afterwards, when the movement was everything, there was only softness and Rose: one of my hands in her hair, and one at the sweet breath of skin at her waist. I felt that I had melted, so neatly had her body fitted to mine, so warm she was, so full. There she was, under my hands, at my mouth: June, and autumn bronzes; spring blossoms, a January hearth. It was a lazy kiss, full of exhaustion; but full of promises, too.

They were all ones that I intended to keep.

‘Your tea,’ she breathed against my mouth. ‘Won’t it be cold?’

‘I’ll make us more,’ I replied, ‘In a few minutes.’

‘Oh really?’ Rose smiled, tracing my cheekbone with her thumb.

‘Yes,’ I murmured, catching her hand and kissing the palm, once. ‘And then we’ll take our mugs back upstairs and sleep on the couch by the fire. You must be knackered.’

She started to laugh again, this time quietly and warmly, and in my arms. I could count the freckles on her nose; I saw that one of her front teeth stuck out just a little bit further than the other. ‘This discussion isn’t over, Malfoy,’ she teased. ‘You’re lucky I’m so tired.’

‘We’ve got plenty of time.’ I knitted our fingers together.

‘Yes, we do.’ Rose Weasley kissed me again. ‘We certainly do.’

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second last chapter, but in essence, the end- full of fluff and sugary softness, so much so that I would probably have developed diabetes writing it were it not for all that acute existential angst. I'm still not sure if I'm happy with it myself and might change some small things further down the line, but please let me know if you loved/hated! 
> 
> The next one should be an epilogue of sorts, tying up loose ends and set five years on. I'm really busy for the next few weeks but it might be up sooner than expected depending on my levels of procrastination. (And after *that* I have a few other ideas in the pipeline for a Scorose that's a little more jolly and plot-driven, but hey ho nobody knows) 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! :) xx


	8. RW- Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five years later:
> 
> _‘Cheer up mate, for Merlin’s sake!’ Al cried, ‘You’re opening a ward, not about to find yourself in one!’_

RW

 

 

May 2nd\- FIVE YEARS LATER

 

The alarm went off at seven am. It was a chirpy, shrill thing which had the irritating quality of being impervious to magic— we kept it by the door so it would annoy at least one of us out of bed.

‘Fucking hell,’ he groaned, so close to my ear I felt his breath on my cheek. I still felt a shiver down my spine. Below the covers, with one hand he pulled me closer. ‘Rosie, shut that thing up, it’s the crack of dawn…’

‘I can’t shut anything up if you won’t let me move, dear.’

Scorpius grumbled, his words apparently muffled by the pillow. He did not let go. The alarm continued its obnoxious shriek.

I waited five more seconds. ‘Scorpius, if that thing continues drilling into my skull a second longer I’m going to stab you with your own wand.’

He muttered something that sounded like ‘fair,’ and relinquished his hold.

In reality, of course, I was no more enthusiastic for the day ahead than he was, but of the two of us, I liked to consider myself the martyr. I clambered out from the covers and padded over to the chest of drawers where we kept the infernal alarm, and I pressed the button to silence it. Taking my wand, I flicked it in the direction of the window and the curtains drew themselves open.

Scorpius let out a dramatic wail and flung an arm over his face as the rising, low-angled sunlight burst across the bed.

‘Toddler,’ I smiled, and jumped on the part of the bed that held his legs so he let out another anguished moan. Grabbing my pillow, I hit the lump in the covers that represented his torso and commanded, ‘Up!’ before leaping off again.

‘We’ve to be at St Mungo’s for nine, remember!’ I called out to him, grabbing his dressing gown as I walked out of the room and flinging it around myself as I moved to the kitchen and boiled the kettle.

It was a tiny flat— but it was really excellent, for Muggle London. We were far enough out of the centre that the rent was manageable and the neighbourhoods were good and pretty, and close enough that we still felt part of the city. It was decorated with a hodgepodge of tastes: Scorpius favoured the minimalist, with dark wood and clean lines; and I liked to cover the surface area with vivid colours and eccentric nicknacks I’d taken home with me from my travels. The tea cosy for our teapot was a point of contention: Scorpius always said that the lurid patchwork brightness of it put him off his cuppa, and I (quite naturally) responded to this by telling him that he should be cutting down on his intake anyhow. At this early stage of our adult lives, it was probably not healthy for him to have a bloodstream of about 98% caffeine.

One of the few decorative points we agreed upon were the bookshelves. We had tried not to use too much magic when doing up the place, but in the end we had so many books between us it was impossible, and we’d had to extend the ceiling up a few feet to incorporate them all. Albus always moaned when he came round that he felt as though he was in a library, and for Scorpius’s last birthday he’d brought a card that, when opened, shouted a few choice quotes from Madam Pince, in her exact voice. In the end, it so perturbed me that we’d had to burn it, and to this day I am still unsure if her dying screams will ever leave my nightmares.

My mother, of course, was thrilled whenever she came round, and often talked to us both about new editions, and favourite authors, and the ratio of Muggle literature to magical that we kept. Astoria, Merlin love her, didn’t so much agree with it as keep her lips pursed and comment on how remarkable it was that two twenty-two year olds should have accumulated so many novels between them in their short lifespans.

Draco and my father, vastly different though they were in other ways, merely rolled their eyes heavenward.

‘Toast, dear?’ I asked as Scorpius walked in, looking groggy and dishevelled in yesterday’s jumper.

‘Yes please. When will you stop calling me ‘dear’?’

I kissed him on the cheek and set his tea in front of him. ‘When it stops being funny.’

‘That was three months ago, when you picked it up from your grandmother at your dad’s birthday party, and you said it for the first time.’

‘Grandma Molly has excellent endearments. Remember when she went through that stage of exclusively calling you ‘that boy’?’

Scorpius grimaced, but it turned into a bleary grin. ‘Vividly.’

I laughed at him, and lazily flicked my wand to butter the toast even though it was less sloppy to do it manually. ‘She got over it once she realised you were nice enough.’

He snorted in response, and then attempted nonchalance.

There was a very particular way of spotting stress within Scorpius Malfoy, and I had become an expert at recognising the warning signs over the years. His face would become calm, but also oddly fixed. He might stare into the distance. Only his hands would show agitation: they had to be occupied with some inane task or other, or else they would begin to slightly shake.

Today, he mechanically rose from the seat he had just settled into, and went to the worktop to take over the buttering of the toast.

His back was impossibly straight.

I went to him, put one hand at his waist. ‘Scorpius,’ I said slowly, ‘How’re you feeling about today?’

He was driving a hole into the bread with the knife he was buttering it so hard. ‘I’m fine,’ he replied. ‘Great. Had a great sleep.’

‘You were up until at least three and you’re torturing the toast,’ I pointed out, reaching out with my hand and touching his wrist. He paused. I continued. ‘It’s all right to be nervous. It’s healthy.’

‘I’ll remind you of that next time you’re having a freak out about presenting to your boss,’ he said wryly.

‘I don’t have ears when I’m anxious, you know that.’

‘Yes, well.’ His voice was taut. ‘Nor do I.’

‘Evidently.’

I leaned over him and took one of the savaged slices. ‘We should probably have bacon, too. Or an egg,’ I suggested after a strained silence, mouth full of the food.

There had been tension in the household for weeks. And he knew it, too.

‘I’m sorry,’ he exhaled at last, taking a bit of toast himself and looking at it as it drooped, miserably, from his hand. ‘I hate public speaking. And it’s in front of my parents— in front of _your_ parents— and Merlin, the _press_ is going to be there—’

‘The press _have_ to be there. Scorp,’ I reminded him exasperatedly, ‘you know what you’re doing.’ I sat back down at the table and began to sip at my tea again. ‘We’ve been over it a thousand times. You’re the only one qualified to do it— no one else can. It’s only five minutes. Quick speech, quick photo: boom! You’re out of there.’

_As long as he doesn’t go off script_ , I thought. _Because then he waffles. And when he realises he’s waffling, he panics, and when he panics, he puts his foot in it._

It was very lucky that my boyfriend was no Legilimens.

Scorpius frowned, chewing his toast absentmindedly opposite me, his gaze drilling into the table as though it held the secret to eternal peace, or at the very least a gateway out of his situation. I opened my mouth to add: _‘just think: five years ago today, I was preparing to do something similar, and I didn’t even have you for support,’_ but something stopped me.

I frowned at myself, though I hid behind my mug so he wouldn’t see. Not that he would have noticed, nowadays, I thought grimly— this event had suctioned up all of his energy, to the point where he was so distracted by it that most other things flew by him. He would sit scribbling notes for hours into the night; he’d send off owls here there and everywhere. Healers, journalists, Ministry people, and goblin bankers would ‘pop in’ at weekends and mealtimes, and last month I’d arrived home from Egypt to find the flat in such a state of disarray it was as though a bomb had gone off, and in the middle was Scorpius’s messy blond head panicking, his long limbs leaping and sending piles of parchment flying off in all directions— and he was shouting ‘Crikey, Rose, I thought you weren’t due back till Saturday!’

It was, in fact, Sunday.

So the thought that he would forget the _other_ significance of this date— May 2 nd, 2028— was never far from my thoughts. He had never forgotten our anniversary before, but I considered that this year it was not only possible, but probable.

_And_ — so I tried to convince myself— it was _understandable_.

But if— _when?—_ the day came and went with no acknowledgement from Scorpius, how would I react?

Would I be able to rationalise it? Would I be able to listen to myself: ‘he had a lot on his mind’, etc., etc.?

Or would the disappointment eat away at me until I snapped?

‘Right, lets get a move on,’ I said. The chair let out a noisy shriek against the floorboards as I stood up. ‘If you want an egg, I’d put it on now— I’m going for a shower. Rendezvous, sitting room couch, 8.45.’

 

* * *

 

 

 

‘Miss Weasley! Mr Malfoy, Comment from the _Financial Mage_ —‘

‘Mr Malfoy, over here, over here!’

‘Where did you get those earrings Miss Weasley?’

‘Mr Malfoy, how do you feel your grandfather would react if he knew how you were spending your inheritance?’

‘Holly Haruspex from _Witch Weekly_ : you’ve put on a bit of weight, Miss Weasley, any truth in those pregnancy rumours?’

Scorpius tightened his grip around my shoulders as we fought our way through a turbulent sea of journalists, obnoxious hacks, and innocent members of the public jostling to the welcome desk. I looked up at him, saw the strain pulsing in his jaw and felt him wince at the flares of the flashbulbs. I squeezed his hand more tightly than I had before.

‘Scorpius!’ cried a familiar voice. ‘Rose, darling!’

It was Astoria, flanked by two large, burly-looking bodyguards obviously hired as security for the day. Picking up our joint pace, we fled the crowd towards her outstretched hands and into the lift, where for the first time she was able to greet us properly, wrapping me in a warm, sweet-scented hug, and kissing Scorpius on both cheeks.

‘Both early, I see!’

‘Rosie’s doing,’ Scorpius muttered grumpily, running a hand through his hair.

I frowned at him before turning to his mother, who looked as polished as I had ever seen her in a cobalt blue dress, with her familiar pearls at her alabaster neck. She no longer intimidated me to the extent she had done when we had first met, five years ago— in fact, we had developed a very good relationship, helped by the fact that I obviously adored her son as much as she felt necessary. ‘Hello, Astoria!’ I said cheerfully, ‘How long have you been here for?’

‘Oh, not long, not long— about twenty minutes or so,’ she replied, her eyes flicking between us with a rabid interest. It occurred to me that the recent, though hopefully temporary strain in our relationship was probably visible to others, and I felt momentarily embarrassed. ‘Draco thought the earlier the better to beat the press. Aren’t they awful? Vicious hacks the most of them—‘

‘Yourself excluded of course, Mum—‘

‘Oh, naturally, darling, naturally! It appears your parents have had a similar idea, Rose, I’m sure I saw Hermione Weasley somewhere….by the way, you look wonderful, my dear— that shade of green goes beautifully with your hair, and those _earrings!_ You know how much I love pearls and they so suit your colour. I say, did you ever go to that little boutique in Cairo that I told you about?’

‘Mum, she was probably too busy with the dialectical hieroglyphs she was sent there to translate,’ Scorpius said, hands in his pockets— fidgeting, no doubt— rolling his eyes.

‘Actually, I did,’ I said pointedly. I smiled at Astoria, whose eyes glinted back at me with a trace of mischief. ‘That’s where I bought them, how on earth could you tell?’

‘Tricks of the trade,’ she winked. She turned to Scorpius. ‘How are you feeling, darling?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said, stiffly.

‘Rose, how is he feeling?’

‘Nervous, not that he’s got any reason to be. I know he’ll be brilliant.’

I nudged him with my shoulder and, smiling as much as he was capable of under this amount of pressure, he reached out for my hand. I was relieved— Astoria noticed our linked fingers and smiled— and then the lift doors shuddered open to the top, fourth floor of the hospital.

Scorpius’s face turned ashen the moment the threshold was crossed. The corridor was thronged with people, and their loud voices and colourful robes filled the room in the most obnoxious way. A large open archway in the middle of the corridor led through to a room where a small stage had been set up, with a lectern on top of it. From where we stood, a curtain covered a floating square, and I presumed this was the bronze plaque which would name the ward and acknowledge its donor.

‘Excuse me, my darlings,’ Astoria said, as a heavy-faced minister called her over from our right. ‘This man has been dragging me for weeks over my review of his wife’s collection of enchanted Panama hats, and I had better slowly explain to him, again, that they are hideous. Good luck my love, if I don’t see you. Try to find your father— I left him speaking to the hospital governor!’

Scorpius swallowed, watching his mother walk away. He turned to look at me in unreserved panic. For him, of course, an face of ‘unreserved panic’ was merely one in which his blue eyes were a little wider, and more wild; and his mouth was a thinner line; and a muscle twitched in the jaw under his cheekbone. Not for a Malfoy was the Weasley chaos of expression.

‘I can’t do this. I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’m going to spew all over the front row.’

I raised my eyebrows as he gripped my hand so tightly my fingers began to lose feeling. I thought it was best to contain his anxiety a little, and so my reply was breezy. ‘Well, don’t worry, I’ll be there to scourgify it off so quick the journo’s won’t even see it.’

‘Rose,’ he whined, ‘it’s not funny, your parents will be there!’

‘Honestly, my dad has stuttered through every speech he’s ever made. And I’m actually sure he was sick over someone once.’

‘It was the Firewhisky the night before, Rosie.’ Here was Lily appearing out of a group of purple-clad wizards to our left. She interjected with her usual brightness, and Albus was at her shoulder. ‘Don’t forget that detail.’

‘Lils! Al!’ I cried happily, tugging my hand out of Scorpius’s oppressive grip and hugging them both in turn as he mumbled a greeting. ‘I’m so glad you could make it!’

‘As if we’d miss it! Apart from James,’ Albus said, apologetically.

‘Well, that’s what you get when you’re in the England squad. Are your parents here?’

‘Somewhere,’ Lily replied, brows knitted. ‘But they said they were going to try and keep a low profile.’ She turned to Scorpius. ‘It’s your day, after all, Scorpy!’

He grimaced so deeply in reply that Albus let out a bark of laughter that turned heads and proceeded to slap him on the shoulder. ‘Cheer up mate, for Merlin’s sake!’ Al cried, ‘You’re opening a ward, not about to find yourself in one!’

‘Go to hell, Al.’

‘It’s all right, buddy,’ Albus replied, fighting a grin. ‘If you feel like making a run for it, I’ll bar the doors.’

‘Wanker,’ came the response, though I noted with quiet relief that Al’s jest had brought a bit of humour back into Scorpius’s eyes. I shared a weary glance with Lily, and she seemed to know what was required.

‘I’m sure your speech will be brilliant, Scorp, and it’s such a lovely thing to do,’ she said kindly, and then risked adding: ‘How’re you feeling?’

‘Like I’m trapped in a cage with a manticore, a dementor, and a dragon, without a wand, and without any limbs, or eyes, and— and I’ve got dragon pox,’ he said earnestly, utterly straight-faced.

‘All right dear, all right, let’s go find your dad,’ I said, taking him by the shoulders and pulling him gently away.

Al roared with laughter as Lily made a worried face and dragged a finger across her throat. ’Come find me if you need the company, Posie!’ she called after us.

‘Dragon pox!’ Scorpius emphasised, and a startled Healer turned their head towards us as we made our way through the crowd.

‘Probably not the best thing to shout in a hospital, dear,’ I muttered.

He didn’t even have the strength to grumble, which is how I knew more drastic action had to be taken. Instead of pulling him into the room with the stage and the lectern where we were expected imminently, and where all the invited ministers, journalists, Healing staff, and medical professionals were beginning to congregate as the moment of the opening approached, I steered him towards what looked like a storage cupboard.

‘What in Merlin’s name—?’

’Shh.’ Checking that there were no witnesses, I pulled open the door and thrust him inside.

He immediately hit his head on a thick roll of bandages protruding from a shelf. There was a definite danger involved in being so tall.

‘Ahh, for f—‘

‘Shh!’ I hissed again, turning to face him and thwacking him on the shoulder with my hand. It was a medicine cupboard, stacked to the brim with vials of preservable potions and medical equipment. It was bigger than I thought, too— stacks of linen took up the far wall and, curiously, there was a stuffed crocodile on the top shelf, with enchanted topaz eyes that blinked leisurely, like an iguana. Although perturbed, I decided not to question it. There were bigger struggles at hand.

‘Rosie, what on earth is this about?’ Scorp asked worriedly, beginning to sweat. ‘I’ve got about fifteen minutes before I have to stand up there and tell the entire wizarding world how guilty I feel about war crimes I’m not responsible for, and explain to them that’s why I’m shoving all my inheritance into some scheme to make me feel better about it, because all I want is bloody social approval, blah blah, blah blah—‘

‘Will you shut up?’ I said irritably, feeling as though I could hit him.

_Fondly_ , I added internally, realising it was not normal to want to slap your boyfriend quite so badly. _I could hit him, but in a fond way. In a kind way. For his own good. I’m such a weakling it probably wouldn’t even hurt him. It would be fond. Gentle._

Shaking my head to clear the internal monologue, I continued. ‘Will you bloody shut up? This is all I’ve heard from you for weeks, your stupid moral dilemmas, and I’m absolutely sick of it—‘

‘You think _you’re_ sick of it?’ he protested, throwing up his arms until— _thwack_ — one hit the doorframe, and he winced in pain. I felt a little bit mollified by this.

‘Yes, and I bloody well am, and if you’ll leave me twenty bloody seconds to speak, I hope I’ll make you feel better about yourself so I can get peace!’

He stayed quiet, though the knot was still there between his eyebrows. Admittedly, I had rarely seen him look so strained, and I felt for him— I really did, despite the urge to shake him senseless.

I knew the effort he had put in— I knew the hours it had cost him, I knew the pressure he was under. No one else I knew would have been able to cope with it, because no one else I knew had his qualities— the commitment and fervour necessary to chase down centuries of inheritance laws in order to fight their case, the diplomacy skills needed to deal with not only hordes of goblin bankers but a legion of ruffled press and judgemental relations, the meticulous organisation required to do all of this while studying to be a Healer. Any other person would have waited until they were older to embark on such a challenge, and certainly no one in their right mind would do it at twenty-two…

But then again, I thought: no one else had a mind like Scorpius Malfoy’s. No one else’s conscience was as truly _good._

Of course, I couldn’t tell him this now. I would tell him this later.

What he needed right now was a good kick up the arse.

‘You need to pull yourself together, and stop thinking about yourself.’

‘Rose—‘

‘Shut up. Let me finish. All I’ve heard from you the past few days, it’s been _‘woe woe and thrice woe, everyone hates me and I need to satisfy my angelic conscience’_ , get a grip! Do you realise what you’re doing? You’ve inherited all your Malfoy fortune, all the years and years of dirty galleons your family has accumulated, and you’re not using it on yourself. You’re starting a bloody mental health ward for victims of war violence, and— listen to me, Scorp, don’t make that face— _that’s the point at which it ceases to be about you_.’

‘I’ve seen how much of yourself you’ve put into this, Scorpius,’ I continued, taking a deep breath, ‘and I love you so much for it, so, so, _so_ much—but it gets to the point where you’ve got to let it go. The hard part is over— the ward is made. Now it’s time for you to go out there, make the speech in that polished, stupidly clever way of yours, and pass this crazy thing on to the patients that wouldn’t be getting the help they needed right now if it wasn’t for you, and the Healers that are going to make them better. Do you get it? _Manage the nerves, Scorp_. Everyone who matters is _so_ proud of you— my parents, my family, your parents— and most of all, me. God, I’m so proud of you,’ I felt a knot in my throat form, and absolutely cursed the moment I ever set eyes on him, this horrible, stupid man that had all of my heart. ‘You know I’ll be right there beside you every second.’

Scorpius was silent, looking at me with such emotion in his eyes that I found it almost unbearable. His lips had just parted to speak, he had just licked them, when a knock came on the door and startled us both.

‘Your dad is looking for you, Scorp. So’s the Healer-in-Charge, whats-his-name, Kentigern.’ It was Albus, and he spoke as quietly as he could through the wood. ‘You’ve got two minutes.’

I was crushed into Scorpius’s shoulder as he enveloped me in a tight hug. I breathed in his lovely, safe scent, and my own heart began to beat rapidly for him— that sympathy, again.

He kissed me on the forehead, on the cheek, on the lips. ‘I don’t deserve you,’ he said, and within a moment I was feeling the draft created by the door he had left through to walk to his fate, and I was staring at the stuffed crocodile with the topaz eyes. I was dazed, and tired, all of a sudden— like I was a balloon someone had let go of to deflate. The exhaustion came out of nowhere, and my knees felt a bit weak. Lily’s light, gentle hand came on my shoulder from the doorway, and she drew me back into the corridor. Albus had left to lead Scorpius away.

‘C’mon, Rosie Pose,’ she murmured. From the pocket of her pretty dress, she pulled out a battered tin of lip balm and pressed it into my palm. Grateful, and remembering another May 2nd, I applied some. ‘Let’s go see him make his name.’

 

* * *

 

 

 

His hands were trembling. I only had the opportunity to press them once and whisper my good luck before he was introduced by the austere-looking Chief Mediwizard and was taken away from me to walk on stage. After the applause settled down, I took my seat in-between my mother and his father. Draco nodded in acknowledgement of me, and even managed what I thought was a small smile before he caught my mothers eye and quickly looked away. Mum touched my knee and said: ‘I’m sure he’ll do very well.’

I stared into space, nervous, before I forced myself to look at the stage. It was the least I could do. Although Scorpius looked calm— slick, even— to someone who did not know him, I noticed the anxiousness in his movements, in the hurried shuffling of his notes. His hands shook and shook, and I was transfixed by them even when he grasped each side of the lectern securely, to stop it from being too obvious. His knuckles turned white as I watched.

He cleared his throat.

In all honesty, I was prepared for the worst. My back was rigid, my jaw tight. It did not matter to me any more that out five-year anniversary would go unacknowledged, and his distance from me over the last few months was becoming more irrelevant by the moment. I only wanted to see him do well. I wanted it over. I wanted him back. And it didn’t matter if he became a garbling mess, drooling inanely over the speech he’d written, it didn’t matter if he broke off halfway to act out the whole of Hamlet, or screech a Weird Sisters song. We would just have to move somewhere no one knew our names. Tasmania, maybe. Rural Tasmania. Merlin knew I would follow him anywhere.

I knew he would follow me, too.

I caught his eye, one glint of the soft blue. To my surprise, he smiled. I returned it, and this seemed to give him confidence. He drew himself up to his full and not inconsiderable height, and in a smooth and clear voice, began.

‘Good morning to you all, Healers and non-Healers, politicians and patients, witches and wizards and magical creatures of all kinds, for joining us on this day to celebrate the opening of the sixth ward on St Mungo’s fourth floor. Anyone who has been in my company over the last ten months has been a witness to my obsession with this project, and now that it has reached its natural end, to them I’m afraid I can only apologise.’

A few titters. A hesitation. My nerves were alight. I knew the journalists would be watching for my reaction and I attempted to rearrange myself to appear more composed.

‘The problem of what to do with the money I inherited from my grandfather Lucius preyed on my mind from the moment I was told it would be mine on my turning seventeen. I— I don’t mind admitting that I never wanted it, and often… often I would be angry that the responsibility of it was placed on my shoulders. I, like a lot of you in this room, am aware of the questionable origins of the fortune. I have never once wanted to deny them. My one wish was to get rid of them in a manner that could go some way— however small— towards compensating for the damage that their getting caused.’

Scorpius spoke slowly, sometimes unsurely, but at least he was clear. Certainly everyone was hanging onto his words— and why wouldn’t they be? His motivation for this philanthropic gesture had occupied certain corners of the press for weeks. We were hounded every time we left the flat. Everyone wanted the story: the story of the Malfoy boy come good.

Draco Malfoy was utterly impassive beside me, though from what I had heard about him in the past, it wasn’t always the case that he could be so emotionless when his family name was called into question. When he threw his support behind his son’s resolution, it was a surprise to everyone but Scorpius. My parents in particular were gobsmacked— but, over time, over these five years, the relationship between our two families had thawed to a manageable point. It would never be warm, but it was not icy.

Personally, I had come to respect Draco Malfoy. And I thought he respected me too.

A solitary camera flash went off. Scorpius continued a little more quietly, and the room seemed to become softer around him. Even the hacks were silent, their quills still.

‘I have felt a lot of guilt. I have done a lot of soul-searching, probably too much. And the resolution came one day, the week after my seventeenth birthday. I was in Gryffindor Tower, studying for my NEWTs with my good friend Albus. He knew of my decision to study Healing and we were discussing it. All he said was: ‘well, why don’t you link the two?’ And though I hadn’t mentioned the inheritance, I knew at once what he meant. It seemed so obvious I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before.’

‘From that point on, I thought feverishly. I considered many possibilities: foreign aid, research funding, sponsoring expeditions to procure rare ingredients for medical potioneering. When I finally considered forming a ward, I didn’t know where to begin— I knew I wanted it to help the survivors of the recent war, and my girlfriend and her family, the Weasley’s and the Potter’s, were instrumental in fleshing the idea out. Hermione Granger-Weasley had read about advances in the treatment of magical mental trauma and suggested I do my research in that area, and, after a few productive meetings with Chief Mediwizard Smethwyck and the pioneering Healer Kentigern, it reached the point where all we needed was a name.’

I found myself on the edge of my seat again. This was the worst part of the speech for Scorpius to make, and we had spent hours poring over the phrasing, fighting about it, to make sure that it was as sincere as possible.

‘In the end, the suggestion came from my father. We had had some terrible news about an old schoolfriend of mine that morning. Once, in my early years at Hogwarts, I had come to the defence of a student about to fall victim to the post-war prejudices of others. And, although the bullying ceased in school where it could be controlled by the authority of the teachers, the student in question could not be protected outside of the castle walls. Upon leaving— at just eighteen years old— Tony Nott was hunted down abroad by dark wizards intent on exacting old vengeances. Paranoid, alone, and in a foreign country, he took his own life.’

The silence in the room was absolute. Aside from his voice, which was showing signs of strain, nothing else moved the air. It was as though the oxygen had been sucked out. I was remembering the nights following the reports of Tony Nott’s death, the sleepless nights. Scorpius had stayed awake in the bed beside me with his hands behind his head, staring at our bedroom ceiling, not moving, not closing his eyes. It felt to me as though I couldn’t do anything to bring him comfort, and he had a haunted look on his face I hope I never see again.

‘That evening,’ he continued, clearing his throat and looking at his notes for the first time after a slight, pregnant pause, ‘my father sent an owl of condolence to Tony’s family, and asked if they would consider allowing us to use his name. And so the Tony Nott Ward for Mental Healing came to be. I hope that— instead of being burdened by association with the history of the Nott family, which I know Tony wouldn’t want— the new ward can come to represent a new era, in which the hurts of the past are mended by open arms, by loving care, and by the best of current, modern magical knowledge and medical expertise.’

Scorpius looked at me again, and his eye twinkled. We both knew the speech almost perfectly, and as a result we both knew what was coming next. We were both remembering the same moment. He had been struggling with the next paragraph. It was two in the morning, and I had fallen asleep reading on the chair opposite him, and he shook me awake in a coffee-fuelled frenzy to ask my advice. I (apparently; I was groggy and half-asleep) batted him off with: _do fuck off. If you really can’t think of anything, throw a Dumbledore quote in there. The man could bring depth to a Witch Weekly article._

It became a joke. The self-sweeping brush wouldn’t move? Throw a Dumbledore quote at it. Albus refused to return a borrowed cloak? Quote his namesake at him. I felt myself grinning.

Scorpius was smiling back.

‘To paraphrase a man far greater than I, ‘hope can be found even in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the light.’ Well, I hope this ward is seen as a bright spot, a refuge, for those who may need it. I hope magical people and creatures of all backgrounds and history can find solace here, and comfort, and freedom from judgement, that they might live their lives in a state of wellness on their own terms.’

I was beginning to feel like maybe we wouldn’t have to move to rural Tasmania after all. Pride in him was beginning to overcome my fear. He was not faltering— he was confident, he was sure, he believed in himself and the words that he had written.

‘I feel that the best magical world is one in which the fears of the past are replaced by hope for the future. And I feel certain that the people of this hospital, this country, and this magical world as a whole, are more than equipped to provide it. With the fervent desire that, with this small gesture, I bring that dream closer to reality, I now pronounce the Tony Nott Ward for Mental Healing _open!_ ’

He waved his wand and the velvet covering flew off the plaque, showing its bronze sheen and neat, intricate lettering. It made no mention of Scorpius’s name by his specific request, but written at the bottom was an inversion of the Malfoy motto. It now read: SPERO VINCET SEMPER.

_Hope will always conquer._

The room burst into cheers and applause, and with another movement, Scorpius made the metal square affix itself to the wall. Once the noise had died down, he returned to his speech, looking as gleeful as a man who has been told his Azkaban sentence has ended ten years early.

‘Thank you, thank you, everyone. This endeavour may have been instigated by me, but many people must be thanked for their practical contribution. Foremost among those are Chief Mediwizard Smethwyck and Healer Kentigern— without their permission, guidance and medical expertise I would certainly never be standing here today. Also, I owe the legal team which helped me to unravel the tricky inheritance laws put in place by my regrettable ancestors at least five bottles of Ogden’s Firewhisky apiece. To the obliging goblins at Gringotts, I offer merely my gratitude and the assurance that I will take as little as possible to do with you again for as long as I live.’

This might have been a joke in another situation, and it was clear that the audience weren’t sure whether or not to respond with amusement. The goblin representative in the audience merely nodded generously in recognition.

‘Those who I must thank for their personal contribution are too numerous to name in an already tiresomely long speech, but I can assure you all that I will convey my gratitude to you in person….with one exception.’

He turned to me, and only to me.

And so, to my mortification, did everyone else in the room.

Thanks to my Weasley genes, all the blood in my body rushed to my face, and my mouth became dry. This was very much not in the script that he showed to me. In my panic, I wondered if he was ad-libbing completely, but then I recognised the confident smirk desperate to burst from his lips, and I knew he had planned this.

The bastard.

‘Rose Weasley,’ he began, as the smirk began to give way to a more genuine, sunny smile that would have made my heart beat faster even if I wasn’t in such a position of scrutiny. ‘I wouldn’t have the strength to stand up here without you. For months and months you have tolerated my chaos— for years, actually, if we’re going to be honest—and you’ve always known what to say to bring me back down to earth.’

_Yes,_ I thought, _up to and including five minutes before this speech when I dragged you into that cupboard and snapped you out of your git-tishness._

‘I am so, so lucky to have someone like you supporting me even when I least deserve it, and I hope one day to have the honour of returning the favour. From the moment you stepped onto that podium on May 2nd five years ago to make the speech of a generation, and possibly even before then, you have been a constant inspiration to me, and I love you.’

I was smiling so much that I ought to have been disgusted with myself. If it was another woman in my position, smiling similarly on the front page of the _Prophet_ tomorrow, I would have fake-retched over my porridge.

But it was happening to me, and so I didn’t have the heart to be cynical. I was only happy.

‘Excessively,’ he added, the grin fell from his face into something more meaningful. One more moment of eye contact followed before he broke it, and turned again to the rest of the room.

I let out a breath, closed my eyes, shook my head.

‘Last of all, it turns to me to thank each and every one of you for coming out in support of this new ward, and to wish the very best of luck to all of our new patients and staff. It is a privilege to be a part of something so worthwhile.’ He raised a glass. ‘To a better world.’

‘A better world!’ Came the response.

And then the clamour, as the audience rose from their seats.

My mother hugged me before I could move. ‘He’s a great man, Rose.’

‘I knew it all along,’ my father grinned, smugly, right over her shoulder.

‘I knew it, too, Dad,’ I said, disentangling myself and laughing.

I could hear Albus behind me joking with someone, maybe Lily or his parents— ‘Did you hear that? I gave him the idea, why don’t I get my name on a plaque—‘

‘Miss Weasley!’ There was Gregor Finch-Fletchley, now with the Prophet gossip section, shouting, ‘any comment?’

‘Miss Weasley has better things to do than talk to you,’ Draco Malfoy said dryly, holding him off with an icy look before nodding at me. ‘I think you had better go rescue my son.’

‘Thanks, Mr Malfoy.’

‘You had probably ought to start calling me Draco.’

‘Thanks, Draco.’

It was definitely a smile this time.

Scorpius was swamped by a large crowd of people, shaking hands with them— Healer Kentigern, who looked very pleased with how it had all gone, and an important health minister who was congratulating him very loudly— but when I had elbowed my way towards him, and he had caught my eye, I heard him say, ‘Excuse me, sir—‘ and he hugged me so hard he scooped me off the ground.

We were both laughing.

‘Yeah, nicely done, I suppose, Malfoy.’ I said, almost breaking apart with the sheer pride I felt, nestled into his shoulder, his familiar smell. ‘That was wonderful, and I hate you, I hate you so much.’

‘Marry me, Rosie, marry me. I mean it, ’ he replied, half-murmuring, half-laughing it into my ear through my hair.

‘What?’

Something went wrong with my heart, I was sure: it felt like it was swelling, like it was ready to stop entirely. I wasn’t sure if I’d heard correctly.

I pulled away to see the expression of the man I chose. There was some fear, there, sure, quite a lot of it— but mostly, there was love. A lot, a lot, a lot of love. He took my hands and bunched them up between us. The crowd didn’t matter in the least, and I was the only one who heard when he said:

‘Happy anniversary, Rose Weasley, you didn’t think I’d forget? And, I mean, I know we’re young, and I know I’ve been insufferable recently, but there’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask you—‘ he broke off to laugh, beaming as the tears of happiness started to fill my eyes— ‘Will you marry me?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my goodness, it's over! The amount of fluff, I swear to God, it wasn't planned, it just sort of...happened. Didn't think I was an engagement sort of gal, but there you go. Further proof, if proof were needed, that fanfiction changes people. 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who has read this story, kept up with it, left kudos and reviews-- I know I've been sporadic in my updates, so extra thanks for hanging in there! I hope you liked it! And if anyone wants to correct my appalling Latin translation, you are more than welcome to :) lots of love! xxx


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